


Yours

by iMightBe



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Carmilla is thirsty AF, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Humor, I'll probably figure out a way to turn this into pure smut, Just Bear With Me, Smut, Strap-Ons, Wee bit of angst, because of course there are, or at least I think I'm funny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-04-19 11:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14236074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iMightBe/pseuds/iMightBe
Summary: Carmilla decides to move across the country on a whim and forges a totally platonic note-passing relationship with her neighbor.Or: Carmilla and Laura both have kitchen windows, and these windows happen to be face to face and right up against each other. Carmilla is a shit cook and Laura takes notice, note posting ensues, a bond is formed, we realize that neither of them have any chill, mild angst occurs and is immediately remedied, and the gays bone.A fantastic read, truly.Title is taken from the Now, Now song of the same name, it's a banger.This is also lowkey inspired by that video where Natasha puts on a Midwestern Mom accent. No shame.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks, here's some stuff that I wrote! Not sure how often I'll be able to update it, but I promise I'll complete it at some point so just hang in there. No smut in this chapter, sorry about that. Hope you enjoy it.

Your mother and sister think that you’re an absolute imbecile for deciding to haul your entire life from sunny Los Angeles to bitter cold Minneapolis; in fact, they’ve told you as much in so many words. You think that they’re imbeciles for deciding to call a place as expensive, congested, and loud as Los Angeles ‘home,’ especially seeing as they have the financial means to settle down _literally_ anywhere else. You’ll admit that your hometown can be beautiful sometimes, and it has a ton of interesting history, but the fact of the matter is that you’ve never actually felt at home there. After you graduated from UCLA — only the finest for a Karnstein, of course — with a somewhat useless philosophy degree, you felt like there was officially nothing left to tie you to the city. 

Mattie had pretended not to be offended when you told her that. 

You played damage control by assuring her that she would finally have an excuse to use the private jet again, and she quickly cheered up. 

You chose to move to Minneapolis on a whim; you’d heard that rent was comparatively cheap and employment rates were high, that there was a decent gay scene, and that there were more seasons than just ‘fucking hot’ and ‘slightly less hot but still muggy.’

That short list, consisting of vague and/or exaggerated descriptors at best, managed to be enough to convince you to put down roots in a state that: A.) you’d never even visited, and B.) if some freak situation where you were being held at gunpoint and forced to list all fifty states arose, you’d probably forget to mention it.

Honestly, you were just excited to be able to layer clothing and wear your favorite boots without suffering from the disgusting and uniquely uncomfortable phenomenon that is toe sweat, an occurrence that plagued any given well-dressed day in L.A.

The weather was one of the main things that people brought up if you said that you were moving to Minnesota. If you had to list the topics people responded to your news with, going from most to least frequently mentioned, it would look like this:

-The cold.

-The Super Bowl.

-The artist formerly known as Prince.

-The proximity to Canada?

_And, for some fucking reason,_

-Vince Vaughn.

Who’d have known that he’s from Minnesota? And more importantly, who fucking cares where the pasty libertarian hails from? 

Not you, that’s for damn sure.

But anyway, you did it. You were in the process of packing up your shit, you found an apartment, and you were getting ready to move to the land of 10,000 lakes. You’d assumed that at any given time Vince Vaughn could probably be spotted ice fishing on one of them. Or not. You don’t care. 

* * *

The week before you dragged your ass to Minneapolis was spent pondering ridiculous bullshit like that, even though you should have been designating all of your available brainpower to sorting out logistics for the move. 

As soon as you’d started thinking about the inhabitants (famous or otherwise) of your new city legitimately enjoying a pastime that involves perching atop a stool on a frozen lake and trying to catch fish that should, in your opinion, be frozen just like the rest of the godforsaken state, you had started second-guessing yourself. 

The immediate concern was that those thoughts sparked an internal debate about whether or not you’d made the right choice with moving to Minneapolis. Maybe you should have just moved to another coastal city where the weather was less extreme and you were closer to your family. 

Then you remembered that you hate L.A. weather, that you didn’t give a shit about seeing your mother, and that Mattie had a goddamn plane at her disposal and could visit you whenever she fancied.

So you moved on.

To a much lesser degree of importance, you started questioning your knowledge of common Minnesotan winter activities. First of all, did people actually do the thing with the glidey-rock and the broom and the imbecilic sweeping and shouting? And if they did, how could they manage to show their faces in public afterward? Also, if grocery stores exist now, why would anyone spend their time dangling a string into a hole with the hope that the chicken wing, or worm, or whatever people use to attract aquatic things, would result in them victoriously hauling a shark through their too-small ice hole and grilling it up for dinner? 

Ultimately, that train of thought tapered off and you were left with more questions than anything even remotely resembling an answer. You’d concluded, rather judiciously in your opinion, that you’d revisit these topics once you’d settled into your new life and gained a bit of understanding about how the place works. 

With those concerns finally put on hold, and the help of a nightcap or two, you managed to drift to sleep easily, ignoring the fact that it was your last night in Los Angeles. You had to wake up obnoxiously early to deal with the movers you’d hired to drive your belongings across the country before you could race to LAX to catch a flight to your new home, so you tried to cherish every second of sleep you got.  

You were left with memories of the tail end of your dream when you started to regain consciousness a few scant hours later. The foggy image of Vince Vaughn frantically sweeping the ground ahead of you — as your dream-self slid across the ice in a deep lunge while directing that stupid fucking rock, of course — quickly faded from your mind and woke you up with a shuddery laugh. 

You’d forced yourself out of bed to begin dealing with the day, hoping that your gin-induced dream would have no bearing on how your new life would turn out.

* * *

 In comparison to the McMansion you grew up in, you’d say your new apartment straddles the line between modest and dumpy. It’s located somewhere between… Uptown and Downtown? You think.  

You need to buy a map. 

And silverware, because you’re not nearly as good with chopsticks as you thought you were, but that’s another problem entirely and neither here nor there.  

(Both are on your ‘Shit I’ll Get Around To Dealing With Eventually Maybe’ list.)  

But regardless of your apartment’s questionable geographic location, you like it. One bathroom, one bedroom, a medium-sized kitchen thanks to your snagging a coveted corner unit, and an open space that you’re pretty sure should be where you put a couch, should you feel so inclined to purchase one. Right now you’ve been keeping some yet-to-be-unpacked boxes there, as well as a conveniently placed pile of dirty laundry. You’ve been known to nap on it occasionally, and see no issue in finding functionality in your own I-can’t-be-bothered-to-clean-this-now-or-also-possibly-ever messes. 

The building you live in is a little strange though; it’s old, a lot of the doorways are placed in unusual and frankly inconvenient spaces, and the window above your kitchen sink is positioned no more than a foot and a half away from your neighbor’s kitchen window. You’re pretty sure that you could actually steal one of the annoying little succulents she has on her windowsill. Only if you both had your windows open and you felt like becoming the proud owner of the world’s most useless plant, though. 

It feels like the city planner back from whenever the fuck the two buildings were created didn’t quite grasp the concept of clearly differentiating between feet and inches when designing the blueprint for your block. 

Thanks to this, in conjunction with your new job as a bartender working primarily 9PM-4AM shifts, your new neighbor’s mystery career that has her waking up and getting ready to leave for work between 5-7AM, and your need to cook, consume, and clean up some kind of dinner-ish meal when you get home from work, you’ve become well acquainted with the state of the inside of your neighbor’s kitchen. Specifically, the state of chaos you witness more often than not, when said neighbor is darting around like an adorable cracked out meerkat grabbing miscellaneous notebooks and papers from every surface of her kitchen, followed by basically throwing herself out her own back door and racing to her car before speeding off in a squealing cloud of frozen exhaust. 

In the month that you've lived in your new place, you’ve learned a number of things about this neighbor. You’ve taken to calling her ‘L’ in your head, mainly because one of the two mugs that she gulps her coffee from — the one that isn’t shaped like an absurd blue rectangle — is decorated with a giant letter ‘L.’ There’s some kind of writing after the ‘L,’ but it’s much smaller than the first letter, so you’ve yet to distinguish what it says. 

So far, your top guesses are ‘Lizard,’ ‘Lesbian,’ and ‘Laryngitis.’ 

She’s cute though, and you’d definitely prefer a mug proclaiming your second guess than the first or third. You’re not sure which would be worse, someone who feels so strongly about laryngitis that they own a cutesy mug dedicated to it, or someone with a genuine appreciation for/desire to be a reptile. You hope that you’ll never be put in a situation where you have to experience both and come to a legitimate decision. 

Moving on, L is, for lack of a better word, interesting. You’d be lying if you said that you didn’t sort of enjoy watching her frantically get ready in the morning, mostly because she’s cute, but also because you haven’t set up cable yet so you don’t really have many other options as far as entertainment goes. You’ll take whatever excitement you can get, honestly, and you decide that there’s no harm in continuing to find amusement in L’s somewhat spastic existence.

* * *

It takes another week of your casual neighbor-watching to realize that she’s watching you too. In her less chaotic moments, that is. To your utter humiliation, you were washing dishes and jamming out to some arguably embarrassing music when you first caught her watching you with an amused smile. You didn’t want to give away how flustered you got, shaken by that sudden reminder of how your kitchen window wasn’t one-way glass, so you just continued what you were doing (with a bit less shoulder-shaking and head-bopping) and threw the girl a wink.

After that event, you both seemed to realize that the observation was mutual, coming to an unspoken agreement that you can both recognize the others’ presence without like, bursting into flames or something equally dramatic. 

So far she’s waved at you three times, and you’ve winked at her twice.

You’re not sure why, but you’d expected your new life to be slightly more interesting than _this,_ this reality where you find yourself counting the number of times your cute neighbor has acknowledged your existence and fucking _blushing_ about it.

* * *

One night, about a month into your whatever-it-is with your neighbor, you get home from a shift tipsier than you’d normally let yourself get. In your defense though, work had been… rough. More accurately, it was an absolute shitshow nightmare, taken straight from whichever level of hell houses clearly drunk underage boys that show up to your bar shouting belligerently and refusing to leave before vomiting across the tables you’d just cleaned. 

Tables. 

Plural. 

That idiot child definitely set a record in distance for projectile vomiting.

Congratu-fucking-lations to him.  

But anyway, you’d allowed yourself a few more beers than usual to cope with the sheer quantity of vomit you had to deal with, and you assumed that it showed, because you were having a bit more trouble with cooking tonight than you’ve ever had before. 

You’d decided to make an omelet, they’re relatively simple and kind of hard to completely fuck up, seeing as if you do you could almost always salvage it and turn the original meal into subpar scrambled eggs. Not tonight though. 

The fact that your slightly heightened inebriation is causing you to bust out some of your more dramatic dance moves probably isn’t doing you any favors, either.  

You’re in the middle of beating some milk and a pinch of flour into the eggs when you spot L. She’s walking from what you’re assuming is her bedroom to what you’re assuming, again, is her bathroom… this is typically par for the course, but tonight, or this morning in her case, it’s different. 

Instead of being clad in one of her usual laughably atrocious matching top and bottom pajama ensembles, she’s sporting a pair of deliciously tight boxer briefs and an olive green tank top, her mop of hair swept ( _attractively_ , your brain adds) to one side of her head.

You’re staring so hard at the sliver of stomach that peeks out when she reaches for a towel from her linen closet that you don’t even realize how manically you’re beating your milk-egg-flour combination. 

Until she looks over at you, that is. 

Like the jackass you’ve repeatedly established yourself to be, you decide that the best course of action is to continue vigorously stirring your bowl of raw egg and pretend that L’s current attire hasn’t fazed you. 

Unfortunately, your vigor is more intense than you’d expected. You wind up splashing the majority of the contents of your bowl directly against your shirt, with a few particularly ambitious drops landing in your gaping mouth. 

Because why not?

Insult to injury, or whatever. 

You’re throwing your mostly empty prep bowl into the sink and dropping down to a crouch in a flash. You think that your sudden disappearance probably looks more ridiculous than if you’d just calmly walked away and changed your shirt, but whatever. 

Too late for that now. Fuck cooking dinner. Especially fuck cooking dinner at 5AM when your night has already been absolute shit. 

Who needs real food? Not you. You’ll survive off of whatever you can scavenge from your current position.

This, of course, means that your potential meal options are unsavory at best. There’s a clump of your own hair that you mistook for a small rodent at first glance, a singular old potato that’s sprouting its own terrifying baby potatoes, or several stray grains of rice that you’d dropped while making dinner the night before. You’re not ashamed to say that you spend a solid five minutes assessing your options before finally conceding to your impending shame and standing back up casually. 

To your surprise, you’re greeted with a bright yellow post-it note stuck against your kitchen window with L nowhere to be seen. Honestly you don’t even know what you were expecting to see… Vince Vaughn waving at you excitedly? Several crows wearing small green tank tops, flapping around her kitchen and drinking coffee from even smaller rectangular blue mugs? Both are unlikely, but then again, so was the idea of L actually making contact with you just a few minutes ago.  

You shake your head in a piss-poor attempt to clear it and decide to take a closer look at this _mysterious_ post-it. 

 

_‘Another great performance, although I hope you clean that mess up thoroughly. Something tells me you won’t dance half as well if you’re slipping across the floor or somehow giving yourself food poisoning.’_

 

You scoff quietly at the neighbor girl’s note, quickly deciding that two could play at this little game of mildly insulting commentary, or, dare you say, _flirtation_? 

You grab a pen and the first piece of mostly blank paper you can find, saying a quick goodbye to the Thai food menu that you’re repurposing as a vessel for this ridiculous interaction. 

Flipping to the back of the paper, you scribble out your response before fetching a strip of tape, (because who owns post-it notes, you’re not a child, for fuck’s sake,) folding it into a sticky ring, and affixing it to the top edge of the paper. You steel yourself, ripping open your window and hastily smacking the note against the glass opposite you, crossing your fingers and hoping that it sticks. 

It’s fucking cold out, and you’ll be damned if anyone thinks you’ll trot your lazy ass outside to fetch the note and re-stick it if it falls. 

 

**‘Why thank you, Cupcake, it’s nice to see that there’s someone looking out for little ol’ me ;) I’ll make sure to be extra thorough in my cleanup, wouldn’t want to deprive you of a show, after all…’**

 

With that, you give up on making dinner and go to your bedroom to change into something less egg-soaked. 

You come back ten minutes later feeling slightly less disgusting, and when you see another note on your window placed neatly next to the first one, you have to make a conscious effort to refrain from sprinting to your sink like a moron.  

With the luck you’ve had today, you’d probably wind up slipping on the mess you’ve yet to clean and faceplanting into your counter as soon as L glances your way. 

So with deliberately slow steps, you approach the window. 

 

_’Cupcake? Is that what you were trying to cook? Also I love cupcakes, just putting that out there in case you ever successfully make a batch and feel like sharing some with your friendly but very very hungry neighbor. And I hope you take your cleaning promise seriously! I think watching you get sick into your sink from accidentally consuming raw egg products would be decidedly less adorable than watching you sashay around your kitchen making god knows what… And by the way, hi! I’m Laura.’_

 

After reading her second note, your first reaction is to find the only cookbook you own and scour it for cupcake recipes. Then you realize that you don’t even know this _Laura,_ and there’s no fucking chance that you’re about to go out of your way to do something nice for a goddamn stranger. 

Regardless of how fuckable and honestly kind of adorable that stranger may be. 

Or if that stranger has a name that you’ve just been made aware of and you find it cute and weirdly suiting. 

And _especially_ if just repeating the stranger’s name to yourself makes your stomach feel a little funny. 

That’s probably just the egg, though. 

You jot a reply on the back of another menu, Italian this time, and place the note next to the first one you’d left.

 

**‘For your information, I was making an omelet. ‘Cupcake’ was referring to you, because you seem sweet and sugary and, based on your outfit earlier, good enough to eat ;) I’ve witnessed enough vomiting during my shift tonight alone to last me a lifetime though, so I’m choosing to ignore that statement for my own wellbeing. But hey yourself, Laura…**

**P.S. I do not, under any circumstance, _sashay._**

**-Carmilla’**

 

Spinning on your heel once the deed is done, you proceed to throw yourself facedown onto your bed. It’s nearly 6AM now and you’re clearly not going to be making dinner any time soon, and you know from past observations that Laura’s going to be gone in the next ten to fifteen minutes, so what’s the point of being up anyway? 

As soon as you finish that thought you dig your face deeper into your pillows and let out a muffled whine. God, what the fuck is wrong with you?

* * *

You’re coming home from another late shift two weeks after your initial note-leaving relationship began, and you’re almost afraid at how routine the process has become. You actually _look forward_ to the brief interactions, and you’ve found yourself considering them the highlight of your day more than once. 

As you trudge around the corner that leads to your block, you give up on not thinking about Laura and start mentally organizing the information you’ve learned about her. 

She’s a journalist, her last name is Hollis, her dad is named Sherman (which you think is ridiculous, what the fuck kind of name is Sherman anyway,) and she grew up in a suburb a few miles out of the city. She watches shitty TV shows and has enough humility to admit that she used to be an avid Snape/Ron reader, she can’t cook to save her life, and she’s funny and smart and charming and you have a giant useless crush on her. The fact that she told you she’s gay and that she can hold her own when it comes to your admittedly not-so-PG communication style, returning the flirtation just as hard as you’re dishing it out, does nothing to stifle that crush.

And _that_ train of thought is immediately shut down, because you’re not a masochist and you sure as hell don’t enjoy the fucking butterflies that swarm around inside you whenever you think about your neighbor for too long. Plus you’re almost home and you can’t feel your fingers. 

You shiver and grumble to yourself as you fumble with your keys, and thankfully you’re successful in your unlocking pursuit on the third try. Managing to force your front door open with the well-aimed bodycheck of a freezing lesbian and brute strength alone, you tumble into your apartment and immediately whip your head to the side to glance at your kitchen window. It’s a habit you’ve developed that makes you feel stupid on several levels; first off, Laura’s never left you a note in the time you’re at work because she’s usually sleeping during that period, secondly, you’re loathe to admit that you’ve basically been conditioned in the Pavlovian sense to feel excitement every time you look at your damn window, and lastly, you just feel fucking dumb. 

Whatever, you don’t need three reasons. Two is more than enough to solidify your stance, it’s dumb. It’s a dumb habit and you’re a dumb lesbian who singlehandedly created and adopted said habit. 

To your surprise though, tonight you actually spot a note. 

 

_‘Hey Carm! I’m gonna be away on business for a few days, so… I figured I should give you my number? In case there’s another egg disaster and you… need to talk to someone about it? I don’t know, it’s 3 in the morning and I’m tired and I want you to have my number because I like talking to you, I don’t know why I’m trying to justify myself to a freaking post-it note. Anyway, here’s my cell, text me. Or don’t. But please do._

_No pressure though!’_

 

Sure enough, you look to the bottom of the note and see a string of hastily scribbled numbers that make your chest feel warm. 

You don’t let yourself dwell over what level of desperate you’re achieving when you whip out your phone and compose a new text to Laura within thirty seconds of receiving her number. You hold your breath as you tap ‘send’ and pray that you copied all of her digits down in the right order.

 

**_Carmilla: Well well well Cupcake, offering to keep me company, eh? How very forward of you… not that I’m complaining. Your company would be infinitely preferable in the physical sense though, it’s awfully cold here, after all. But I guess this will have to do for now._ **

 

You start throwing food together to maintain some semblance of normalcy, but you know if anyone were to see you right now that the little smile you’re trying to hide and the way your hands shake ever so slightly would give you away in an instant. Your stomach is swirling with a combination of giddiness and nerves; two feelings that you _really_ prefer avoiding. 

After fifteen minutes and two unsuccessful attempts at making PB&J, you feel your phone buzz repeatedly in your back pocket. You’re almost too distracted to notice it, what with the majority of your energy and attention getting funneled into the part of your brain that deals with berating yourself. 

Your internal monologue sounds a little bit like this: _Really, Karnstein? You fucked up the world’s easiest meal. Seriously, you’ve seen the commercials, literal children can make this goddamn sandwich. It brings sons closer to their fathers and makes families happy and helps little girls win the Olympics, yet you’re not able to spread some fucking peanut butter without tearing the bread in half? What’s_ wrong _with you?_

Pushing that rant inside the recesses of your mind and shoving it into a box labeled ‘Shit to Ponder While High,’ you manage to snap back into reality.  

That’s right, your phone buzzed. 

You panic for a second, what if it’s Laura? Then you remember that of course it’s fucking Laura, who else would be texting you at 5:35 AM?

You take a deep breath and open the thread containing a whopping _six_ new messages from ‘Unknown Number.’

 

_(1) Sorry for the delay, I just landed!!_

 

(You snort at that, it’s been fifteen minutes since you first texted her. You’re pretty sure that you’ve gone longer without blinking.)

 

_(2) But really? Still Calling me Cupcake, Carm?_

_(3) Also, I know how cold it is, I’m the one from Minnesota, remember? Put on a sweater, you useless lesbian! Plus, I’m working on a story in f*cking CANADA right now, I’m so cold that death sounds like sweet sweet absolution._  

_(4) Shit, typo, sorry! I didn’t mean to put an asterisk in the last text, I swear!_

_(5) Hahahaha wait, was that a pun? I meant ‘I swear’ as in ‘I’m an adult who uses profanity frequently because I’m not a dork and also totally not afraid to sound edgy,’ not like ‘I promise,’ although I guess it works both ways in this case!_

_(6) Oh god that was a lot of texts, sorry! I’m running on literally no sleep and my brain is everywhere right now!_

 

After saving her as a contact, you have to go back and reread her texts a few times before you can tell what the fuck she was trying to say. Once you actually understand her train of thought, it takes you another five minutes to figure out how to reply to her text-diarrhea.

 

**_Carmilla: Deep breaths, Laura. Yes, I’m still calling you Cupcake, because I’m still convinced that you would taste delicious. And to respond to the rest of your rambling:_ **

**_A.) I’m currently wearing TWO sweaters, thank you very much. Who’s useless now?_ **

**_B.) You’re a dork. A dweeb, if you will. No amount of cursing will convince me otherwise._ **

**_C.) That’s too bad, buttercup, and it’s a shame I’m not the reason you’re lacking sleep._ **

 

You send the text with a smile on your face, and this time her reply is almost instantaneous. 

 

_Laura: You are unbelievable._

 

You frown, genuinely thinking you’ve gone too far this time, but your worries are quickly abated when the three little dots underneath her previous text morph into a new sentence.

 

_Laura: Is it weird for me to kind of miss you, even though we don’t really know each other?_

 

That sentence results in several emotional responses that leave you a little bit too unsteady for your liking. You were scared that you’d pissed her off, elated that she misses you, comforted by her mutual confusion, and upset with how she so plainly stated that the two of you are still basically strangers. You thought you were actually getting to know one another, but maybe that feeling is one-sided? 

Conflicted, you choose to reply with humor and just a little bit of honesty.

 

**_Carmilla: Believe me, you’re not the first girl to call me unbelievable ;) But to answer your question: No, not at all, sweetheart. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss you a little bit too…_ **

 

It takes you all of three seconds to come to the conclusion that your last text was _way_ too soft, and in a flash you’re calling upon the snarky bitch that lives inside of you and tapping out seven texts that constitute an ass-covering rant that rivals Laura’s for the ramble-of-the-year award.

 

**_Carmilla:_ **

**_(1) Mainly I miss the free entertainment._ **

**_(2) What with getting to watch you literally transform from a zombie in horrible pajamas to a little gay squirrel, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, in the five minutes it takes you to drink that sugary-milk swill that you call coffee._ **

**_(3) And my window looks empty without any new ridiculous notes stuck to it. That’s all._ **

**_(4) Also I’ll never get over the fact that you fucking LAMINATED a note last week._ **

**_(5) Who does that? Who the fuck even OWNS a laminator?_ **

**_(6) Like why? Are you secretly a 2nd grade teacher? Where do you even buy one of those things?_ **

**_(7) Plus, what the fuck use do you even have for it, other than laminating a single goddamn post-it note? Do you laminate your fan-fiction so you can read it in the shower?_ **

 

By the time that last text is sent, your phone is buzzing away with Laura’s response. Part of you is kind of afraid of how she’ll take your words, the other half is itching for an equally snarky reply, because it’s been a while since you’ve had someone to banter with that’ll actually match your (truly impressive) level of disaffected-bitch. 

 

_Laura:_

_(1) Whoa there, hello to you too, wall of text. God Carm, is this how you feel when I leave my notes? Because I know sometimes I’ll run over the allotted space and have to tape a few notes together and now I’m rambling so I’ll stop._

_(2) Anyway, I’m choosing to take your rude running commentary as one very long, misguided compliment. So thank you. Thank you very much. I’m pleased to know that I function as such a great source of entertainment._  

_(3) Also, it was SNOWING that day! I’m not going to spend the time to write out a note just to have that effort wasted when it immediately gets all soggy and falls apart! I’m a journalist, what if I’m doing an interview in like, a rainforest or something? I REALLY wouldn’t want my notes to get ruined then, right?_

_(4) So you see, a laminator is a practical, handy, tool, and it doesn’t receive nearly enough open praise, which is where I come in. Laminators are GREAT, Carm, get over it. Can you think of_ **_anything_ ** _better than a laminator?_

_(5) Exactly. Thought so._

 

You’re half impressed, half terrified by the time you finish reading Laura’s… impassioned rant on behalf of all laminators around the world? Honestly, you’re not even sure where to take the conversation at this point, your brain hurts and you’re strangely turned on by her getting all assertive, regardless of the topic. The fact that it’s nearing 6:30 AM probably isn’t helping anything. You keep your response short and sweet.

 

**_Carmilla:_ **

**_(1) Holy shit sweetheart, you’re kind of insane. I’m surprisingly into it, though._**  

**_(2) And on that note, I’m gonna have to leave you to your own devices for now. It’s bedtime._ **

 

Laura replies quickly, which you’re thankful for because your eyelids are getting obnoxiously heavy.

 

_Laura: Ugh, whatever. Goodnight Carmilla._

 

You’re about to fall asleep, but you figure that now is as good a time as any to get in a few parting shots, just to solidify the fact that you’ve got a dirty mind and the maturity of a fifteen year old. 

 

**_Carmilla:_ **

**_(1) And good morning to you, Cupcake._ **

**_(2) BTW, I’d say that a dildo is the most practical ‘handy’ tool that doesn’t receive enough open praise. It’s definitely far more enjoyable than a fucking laminator._**  

**_(3) But different strokes for different folks, I guess._ **

 

You throw yourself into bed, far past the point of being able to actually make dinner, and snicker to yourself like the shitty child you are. The curiosity of how Laura will reply is honestly the only thing keeping you awake at this point. 

  

_Laura: OH MY GOD CARMILLA! You know what, no, I am not having this conversation right now. Go to bed!!!_

 

**_Carmilla: Bossy, I like it ;)_ **

 

_Laura: I’ll say it again because it bears repeating, you are unbelievable. And also, again, GO TO SLEEP._

 

**_Carmilla: Fine, fine, I’ll do what you want this one time, Sundance._ **

 

_Laura: I’m flattered. Now go. To. Sleep._

 

You drift off thinking about Laura, and just this once, you let the warm feeling in your chest overpower the urge to gag and do something to solidify your douchebaggery. You definitely think you’re gonna enjoy getting closer to this girl… 

* * *

When Laura returns early in the week following your initial text conversation, you’re not quite sure what to expect.  

Had your recent level of communication been a one-off? You’d texted each other almost nonstop during the time that she was away, and you’re more than a little worried that the two of you will just go back to the daily post-it note exchange upon her return. 

Thankfully, your worries vanish when she texts you at 5AM the morning after she gets back.

 

_Laura: Hey Carm!! Not to make you jealous or anything, but I just slept for 15 hours straight and it was glorious. I think I’m going to marry my bed._

 

You try to quiet the overwhelming sense of relief that settles over you after that text… and fail spectacularly, as per usual. You wind up responding immediately, only cringing at how lengthy your reply is a little bit, which you think is maybe progress?

 

**_Carmilla:_ **

**_(1) Me, jealous? Na—no actually wait, yeah, I’m super fucking jealous. Sleeping for more than four hours at a time sounds orgasmic, honestly a deep REM sleep cycle feels like a distant memory to me at this point. Maybe I just need someone to keep me company though… lucky for you, I’m currently accepting applications._ **

**_(2) Oh, and speaking of orgasms, are you sure you don’t want to reconsider this newfound relationship with your mattress? Or, more importantly, is it monogamous? I’m just saying, if 15 hours of sleep can earn a proposal from you, then I’m incredibly curious to know what 15 hours of mind-blowing sex would get me._ **

**_(3) A pony, maybe…?_ **  

**_(4) Just for future reference, I’m more of a cat girl myself. Horses smell bad and have horrifying genitalia. Pussy is just the all around better choice if you ask me._ **

 

You’re puttering around the kitchen as you wait on Laura’s response, twirling a spatula in one hand and half-assedly slapping a sandwich together with the other. Due to the current heatwave, (your thermometer reads a whopping 42ºF) both you and Laura have your windows cracked a little bit. To distract yourself from thinking about how ridiculous your life has become and questioning your choice to relocate somewhere where 42ºF is considered warm, you dedicate the majority of your attention to listening to the occasional noise that drifts over from Laura’s apartment.

A few minutes after sending your text, you hear what sounds suspiciously like someone banging their head against a wall. Repeatedly. Glancing down to your phone where the conversation thread with Laura is still open, you notice that the little ‘someone is actively typing/typed one letter and forgot to erase it so now you’re left in anticipation like a moron’ dots keep popping up and then disappearing. 

Then the banging noise from a minute ago stops, and you hear Laura whine “Worst. Crush. Ever” into her empty apartment. 

You grin to yourself and fight to ignore the way her words make you blush, even though they clearly weren’t meant to be caught by you. 

Dropping the spatula that you’d still been twirling for some fucking reason, you snatch up a pen and pull a post-it note from the top of the stack. You scribble out an ‘I heard that.’ and stealthily stick the note to Laura’s window. Then you spend a solid minute dealing with the crippling shame brought on by the fact that yes, you actually broke down two days ago and went out to buy motherfucking post-it notes. You rationalize your past actions by reminding yourself that you were simply sick of ruining perfectly good take-out menus. 

Distracted as you are by your heated internal battle over the inherent value and symbolism of stationary and other such paper goods, you nearly drop your sandwich in alarm when your phone buzzes with Laura’s response. 

You shake your head, giving a long parting glare to the plain yellow stack of post-it notes on your counter. Picking up your phone with a quiet mutter of ‘ _this isn’t fucking over_ ’ aimed at those goddamn notes, you unlock your screen and reopen your messages. 

 

_Laura:_

_(1) Holy shit, Carmilla. What, exactly, drives you to communicate like such an asinine douche? Have you always been like this, or am I just special? Actually, don’t answer that._

_(2) And thanks for the update on your feelings towards horses. It figures, I just ordered you a massive silicone horse-dong for our one week text-anniversary… what a waste._

_(3) And it’s non-refundable. You now owe me $78, Karnstein._

_(4) Your debt can be repaid with cupcakes or physical favors. Got a preference?_

 

You grimace at the mental image of Laura trotting happily through a shopping mall, comically large dildo in hand and a smile on her face. Then you reread that last text and your mind conjures an image that’s far, far more pleasant. You’d be more than happy to provide literally any fucking favor to Laura. Especially if that favor is fucking. You tap out a reply.

 

**_Carmilla: Got a preference? Is that even a question?_ **

 

Laura’s response is instantaneous.

 

_Laura: No, you’re right. I take it back. What kind of cupcakes can you make?_

 

You drop your head into your hands and groan. God, this fucking girl.  

* * *

You’re in your kitchen a week later, reveling in an unusually good mood. The bar was slow tonight, so your manager let you leave a whopping thirty minutes early. Using those spare thirty minutes as paltry leverage in reasoning with the slightly responsible side of your brain, you decide to be ambitious and cook an actual fucking dinner for once. 

Popping in your headphones after opening up spotify and adding _After Laughter,_ a guilty favorite of yours, to your queue, you begin to gather the necessary ingredients for a half pan of baked ziti. You’d make a full sheet, seeing as you’re going through the effort of cooking and all that, but your only full sized baking pan is currently in use, acting as a bedside garbage bin. 

You’re not sure why you thought that that was a good idea, especially seeing as you have an abundance of empty plastic bags at your disposal, but fuck it. You’ve made your garbage bed and now your garbage self has to lie on it. 

You’re done prepping the food and getting ready to throw it into the oven by the time you feel Laura’s eyes on you, and it’s enough to halt your quiet hip-swinging sing along. You’re not that disappointed though, because the album is almost over and honestly you’d do just about anything to have her looking at you.

When that thought finishes you’re just about ready to brain yourself with your spatula. Fucking sap.

You’re debating the merits of death by spatula versus death by slotted spoon when your phone buzzes. It’s from Laura, of course, and you read it quickly.

 

_Laura: What are you even listening to over there, dancing queen???_

 

**_Carmilla: Three question marks? Don’t hurt yourself, cutie. But to answer your question, death metal, obviously_.**

 

_Laura: First off, I resent that. Secondly, …sure…_

 

You continue to bounce along to fucking Paramore, of all things, mouthing the lyrics to Pool to yourself while trying to figure out what to text Laura next. Then inspiration, or whatever inspiration’s drunk 4AM equivalent is, strikes. 

 

**_Carmilla: Don’t believe me, sweetheart? Come and check for yourself_.**

 

A minute later there’s a knock on your door and wow, you didn’t think the creampuff would have the gall to actually take your invitation to heart, let alone hop the waist-high fence that separates your properties while wearing that cute little pencil skirt she’s got on. 

You open your door and suddenly there’s five feet of smirking, self-righteous lesbian in your kitchen.

“Really, Carm? Death metal? You don’t _prance around_ to death metal. And _you,_ you _most definitely_ prance. So I’ll ask again, what’re you listening to?”

You discretely reach for your phone to pause your music and exit spotify, but Laura see’s the action and beats you to it, yanking your unused headphone from where it rests between your breasts and popping it into her own ear. 

_Seriously? Has she no boundaries?_ You think for a split second, before immediately scratching the thought and replacing it with _Oh wow I love the way her face just lit up, that grin is magic._

“Oh my god! I love After Laughter!”

You gently thud your head against your fridge before taking a deep breath and turning back to your neighbor.  

“You fucking caught me, hooray. Are you staying for breakfast-dinner or what?”

* * *

You’re sitting in a booth and chugging a subpar cup of coffee at the cafe down the street before work one night when you spot Laura at a table across the room. A month has passed since you and her shared your first breakfast-dinner, and it’s been happening with increasing frequency since then. 

Realistically, you know that these encounters should’ve solidified your understanding that Laura _is_ an actual flesh-and-little-gay-bones human being, not just a voice on a phone or some nebulous conscience that leaves you witty notes every day, yet you still find yourself surprised to see her out and about in the real world. 

In a moment of caffeine induced panic, you freeze up and absolutely refuse to let your eyes stray in her direction. Mainly because you’re kind of afraid that the Laura you’ve come to know might be a totally different Laura from the one twenty feet away from you that’s drinking tea at 8PM with a sleepy expression on her face. Also because she’s wearing some outfit that includes a sheer blue midriff-exposing top and sinfully tight jeans, and really, you’re only human. 

You glance at her stealthily again and notice the leather jacket that’s hanging off the back of her chair. Stifling a whimper, because the notion of Laura in leather has you feeling some kind of way (i.e. wet), you curse to yourself when you see that she’s noticed your presence. 

From the corner of your eye, because yes, you _are_ still facing the wall like a jackass, you see her gather her things and move across the cafe towards your booth. 

You pretend not to see her approach, and only turn to face her at the last second, offering a low “Fancy seeing you here, sweetheart,” and a smirk. 

Laura clearly isn’t put off by your standoffish greeting, plopping ungracefully into the other side of the booth and reaching across the table to steal a sip of your lukewarm black coffee. She just barely refrains from spitting it back into your cup and swallows with a grimace, which, at the very least, indicates to you that she’s the same endearingly awkward, forthright, Laura that you’re well acquainted with.  

“First off, why do you insist on drinking coffee in its shittiest form, Carm? Secondly, hi!”

You feel your cheeks warm up with her greeting, and just as you’re about to open your mouth to defend your choice of beverage, Laura continues talking. 

“You realize I’ve seen you splash yourself with egg, lip-sync into a spatula, and pick a rogue Hot Cheeto from your tits with a pair of chopsticks, right? You can drop the dark and mysterious act.”

You break out into a small grin and look down at the table with a shrug. You see Laura’s got both of her hands resting dead center on the worn, wooden surface, and you have the strongest urge to cover her hands with your own. 

Instead, you take a deep breath and lean forward into her space. 

“Being dark and mysterious isn’t an act, Creampuff, it’s just how I am.”

She scoffs and you continue, 

“And also, it wasn’t a Hot Cheeto, it was a normal Cheeto. So clearly you don’t know me at all and my mysteriousness has proven successful.”

You bring one of your hands up to the tabletop and flick her thumb to punctuate your statement, laughing when it earns you an indignant yelp. 

“Whatever you say, oh mysterious mistress of kitchen disasters. Why were you even trying to use chopsticks for Cheeto removal anyway? You have fingers, remember? Personally, I felt like it was a problem that your talented and dexterous neighbor could’ve remedied… your loss, I guess.” 

She glances pointedly at your chest and taps her fingertips against the table a few times in quick succession. You don’t know where this is going but you’re fucking into it. 

***

You talk and flirt and laugh for a full goddamn hour before you realize that your shift started three minutes ago. Laura seems to notice the time at the same moment that you do and pales, immediately beginning to slip on her jacket. You copy her movements, hastily explaining that you need to get to work and attempting to place a quick kiss on her cheek in lieu of a verbal goodbye. 

Instead, Laura stands up distractedly and you get a mouthful of hair and a surprisingly bony shoulder to the tit. 

“Shit, sorry Carm, I just realized I’m late! I’ve got a-a thing, uhm, with Danny, and I’ve really gotta go, bye!”  

She’s racing out of the cafe before you can respond, and it takes a minute before you can place the name, but then you remember Laura mentioning this _Danny_ a few times and connect the dots. There’s the way Laura always sounds like she’s smiling when she says that name, and the fact that she quickly changes the topic after she mentions her… add in Laura’s outfit tonight and the pieces click together. 

 

She’s going on a date. 

You think you’re gonna be sick. 

 

Burying the all-encompassing feelings of shame and hurt and stupidity deep into the back of your mind, you rush out of the cafe and blink back tears as you walk sluggishly to work. 

 ***

You manage to break three glasses and fuck up half a dozen drink orders that shift. 

When you get back to your apartment at 3AM you see that Laura’s bedroom light is still on, and your stomach sinks. 

Then you notice that there's another jacket hung on her coat rack and a pair of shoes by the back door that are clearly several sizes too big for Laura. Yo ur appetite disappears.

You shut off your phone and pull down the blinds to block the kitchen window before going to sleep. 

This fucking sucks. 

* * *

The day following what you’re now labeling as ‘The Cafe Incident’ starts with you waking up late in the afternoon feeling like shit. Your eyes are itchy and puffy, there’s dried snot on the t-shirt acting as your pillowcase, and your heart literally fucking hurts. The worst part is that when you turn on your phone, you’re met with more than a dozen texts from Laura. They all had generally the same tone, playful and flirtatious, mock-angry and flirtatious, etcetera, although the last few do sound genuinely concerned

You don’t give much thought to the situation before responding.

 

**_Carmilla: Leave me alone, Laura._ **

  

After blowing your nose against your pillowcase a few times — because you feel like shit so you might as well live like shit, too — you roll over and curl up into yourself, attempting to catch at least another hour of sleep.

Your phone buzzes as soon as you get comfortable though, and you angrily adopt a starfish pose across your mattress while heaving out a massive sigh.

  

_Laura: She lives! Seriously though Carm, are you alright??? I missed you this morning!!_

  

You think about ignoring her, but in your just-woke-up-limited-mental-capacity state, you decide that you might as well just say whatever the fuck you want. It’s not like you’re ruining any chance of being with her, seeing as she’s clearly not fucking interested.

  

**_Carmilla: Your overuse of punctuation marks was endearing at first, but now it’s just aggravating. Like I already said: Leave. Me. Alone._ **

 

_Laura: Uh, WOW. Alright, well I’ll just give you a minute to get over whatever the fuck it is that’s bothering you right now. If you want to talk about it, and can manage to do that without treating me like shit, I’m always here to listen._

 

Her response makes you angry, like really, _really_ angry. But you know that when you get angry you get destructive and hurtful and downright vile, so right now you figure that the best course of action is to simply block out the source of your anger.

You start by deleting Laura’s number.

Then, you get out of bed and gather all of the notes that Laura’s left you and shove them into a plastic bag that gets tossed across the room, into the corner with the rest of the miscellaneous garbage that you need to take out.

It’s only 4PM, but you throw on the first items of clothing that smell suitably clean and grab your wallet and keys. You’re sure your manager won’t mind you showing up early for once. And if he does mind, then you’ll just wander around until you can go to work, because right now just about anywhere is preferable to your apartment, as long as it doesn’t make you think about Laura.

***

You keep on like this, ignoring your phone, staying away from home, keeping your blinds shut, for a solid two and a half days. Then you get home from work on the night of day three to find that a handful of notes from Laura had been shoved into the centimeter wide gap between your windowpane and the windowsill. You’re almost positive that that gap wasn’t there when you’d left for work.

Stealthily, you pull open a space between a few of the slats in the blinds to get a better look at the glass pane. And yeah, sure enough, smudged finger and palm prints are all over the fucking window.

She seriously opened your fucking window? Is that considered trespassing? You have half a mind to start checking your closets and cupboards to see if she’s hidden out somewhere, but then you remember that you’ve set the window latch to keep it from opening more than two inches or so, and that Laura isn’t a fucking shapeshifter. 

Still, her persistence makes you even angrier, and like the true Karnstein you are, you respond maturely.

By locking your window.

And trying to put the notes down your garbage disposal.

 

You break your garbage disposal.

***

By day five you feel like a shell of a human. Dramatic, you know, but it’s true. This miserable, self-imposed Cold War has done nothing but solidify to you just how much you care about Laura, and it really, truly fucking hurts. After you get home from work you open your phone for the first time in days, and it buzzes with text notifications for a full 30 seconds before you can actually go to your messages. 

When you see that most of the messages have come from some unknown number, You’re confused for a moment. Then you realize that you deleted Laura’s number and feel even worse.

Biting the bullet, you open the 27 messages from her and read them through. With each message you read, you find yourself feeling like more and more of an absolute cunt.

The first one she sent was at the end of day one, a few hours after you’d deleted her number.

  

_Unknown: Okay I’m still angry at you but seriously Carm, what the fuck?_

 

Her texts go from defensive and concerned to upset and concerned, and the change in tone basically clues you in to the fact that one of you are seriously misunderstanding something. Based on her texts, you’re realizing that that’s you.

  

_Unknown: Carmilla? It’s been over 36 hours and I haven’t seen or heard from you, if you’re ghosting me for some fucking reason, (which is gonna be REALLY difficult to accomplish, seeing as we basically share a window,) then at least tell me what the fuck I did! Or what’s going on, or what happened, or anything!? I just want to know that you’re alright._

  

_Unknown: I can see that your light is on through the blinds, you know. So at least I know that you’re not dead._

 

_Unknown: Please Carm, just talk to me! I thought we were having such a good time at the cafe, and I’m sorry that I had to run out so quickly but I was late to a business dinner with Danny and I panicked and I’m sorry! What did I do?_

  

You take a deep breath.

Business dinner?

As is, work-related and not a date?

It doesn’t explain the extra clothing in Laura’s apartment or the way she speaks about Danny, but it does start to make your stomach feel slightly less like it’s trying to tear a hole in itself.

It takes a few moments of fiddling with your phone, but a moment later you’ve got Laura saved as a contact again. Then you grab a pen and your fucking post-it notes and start figuring out how to apologize for being an emotionally stunted overgrown shitbaby.

It takes almost an hour to write the note, but eventually you’re somewhat satisfied with it. Fighting the sudden nausea that you’re hit with at the thought of putting yourself out there, you pull up your blinds, unlock and open your window, and hastily press your note against Laura’s.

 

**‘Hey Cupcake. I just read your texts, and I want to apologize. I can’t give you some great, sensible excuse for my behavior, honestly I’m just a jealous moron who’s shit at communicating and I’m so so sorry that I took it out on you. You did nothing wrong, and I feel terrible for making you think that you did. Any chance you’d be willing to forgive me?’**

  

You go to the bathroom to wash your face after putting up your note, and when you return to the kitchen you see that Laura’s lights are now on. Then you almost have a fucking heart attack because someone is knocking at your door at 5AM and it’s either Laura or a serial killer.

You don’t bother looking through the peephole before opening the door, figuring that you’ve been a big enough dick to deserve whatever grisly fate awaits you. Thankfully, you’re met with an armful of Laura rather than a knife to the face. She clings to you like a little gay koala and good god you missed her.

She doesn’t pull her face away from your neck before she starts talking.

“Jesus, Carm, I’m sorry for just bursting in but I was so worried about you and just — UGH!” 

You don’t interrupt, you can feel her taking a deep breath from where your arms are wrapped around her waist and you assume that she’s trying to get her thoughts in order.

“Listen, I’m not gonna make you tell me exactly what’s going on, or what happened, or whatever… but can you just promise me that next time you’ll actually talk to me before shutting me out? And also, if you could refrain from treating me like shit again, that'd be nice.”

You sniffle and nod against the side of Laura’s head.

“I will, sweetheart, I promise. And for what it’s worth, I still think your overuse of punctuation marks is cute and I’m sorry that I said you’re annoying.”

You feel her let out a shaky laugh against your throat and it makes you smile like a dumbass.

“It’s fine, I know you think it’s cute. And actually, you said that I was aggravating, not annoying.”

You snort,

“Semantics, cutie. Now, are you planning on letting go of me at some point? Not that I’m complaining, trust me, but I’d really like to close the door because it’s letting the cold in…”

Laura just grumbles and blindly waves her arm behind her until she’s got a hold of your doorknob, and then she’s yanking the door shut and clinging onto you even tighter.

So yeah, the five and a half days that you spent ignoring Laura were arguably the worst in your life. And considering the fact that you once survived a two week long road trip with your mother and sister while Mattie was at the height of her angsty teenage anime phase, that’s saying a lot.

You know you still have some talking to do, but right now you’re content to just settle your chin on top of her head and breathe in her scent until your arms go numb from holding her. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is like 13,000 words and a solid 6,000 of them are smut. The rest are fluff. I'm garbage.  
> Also, I was too lazy to re-read this whole thing to edit it for the millionth time so I had my computer's automated voice read it to me and I'm feeling absolutely scandalized.  
> Also also, real talk, why is it that some fics are available in reader view when using an Apple product, but some aren't?

It’s been a few days since you realized that you were acting like an absolute douchebag and tried to reconcile things with Laura, and thankfully everything has more or less gone back to normal. You guys are still sending suggestive texts and leaving flirtatious notes and you couldn’t be happier.

Which is a boldfaced fucking lie, of course. You’d be happier if you were spending your days with your face between her thighs. But beggars can’t be choosers, so you’ll take what victories you can.

* * *

A week and a half after you two make up, you’re greeted with exciting news. Laura has a day off of work. Realistically you know that this isn’t supposed to make you as giddy as it does, but fuck it, you’re allowed to be happy.

Is it mildly pathetic and potentially unhealthy that an extra few hours with Laura is currently functioning as the sole source of your happiness?

Yes, probably.

 _But,_ do you give a fuck?

Nope. Not a single fuck.

For some reason, Laura keeps the same sleep schedule regardless of her commitments for the day, which means that she’s up bright and early on her day off instead of sleeping in like any sane human would be. You don’t mind, of course, because this just means that she’s awake with you and able to come over to your place without the responsibility of having to rush off to work hanging over her head.

With that in mind, you decide to cater your meal choice to her frankly appalling sugar-based appetite.

She’s knocking at your door before you even realize that she’s left her apartment, and you shout for her to come in just as the timer on your oven dings. You glance over your shoulder at her while you open the oven door, and you’re so preoccupied with everything about her that you nearly reach to pull out the baking tin with your bare hands.

You’re sure giving yourself second-degree burns would go over really well right now. Laura would be super impressed.

Grabbing a pair of oven mitts and acting like you totally knew that you needed them, you manage to safely extract the pastries you’ve spent the last hour making.

Cupcakes. For the Cupcake.

God you’re a fucking loser.

Glancing back at an uncharacteristically silent Laura as you place the tin down, you see that she’s rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet with a wide, excited smile on her face.

Once you’ve removed the oven mitts and set the cupcakes on a rack to cool, you turn around and greet Laura.

“Morning, Creampuff. Lose your voice or something?”

Her smile doesn’t falter in the slightest.

“It’s Cupcake, actually. And no, my voice is perfectly fine, thank you very much, I was just busy admiring the view. It’s not every day that I get to see the mysterious badass Carmilla Karnstein baking me cupcakes while wearing a ‘kiss the cook’ apron, after all.”

 _Fuck_ , you completely forgot that you were wearing that. Laura laughs as you hastily rip it off and fling it into a corner, and you try not to blush too obviously.

“It’s just cute, _you’re_ cute. And it makes me happy that I get to watch you be cute. That’s all.”

She sounds so sincere and it makes you want to simultaneously melt into the floor, never to be seen again, and also grab her by the cheeks and show her how cute you think _she_ is. You do neither, choosing to deflect instead.

Old habits, or whatever.

“Pfft, who even said these cupcakes are for you? Presumptuous much? I’m planning on eating all of them and making you watch.”

Laura raises an eyebrow and shrugs.

“I think I’d be pretty alright with that, actually.”

Your eyebrows shoot to your hairline in response.

“Kinky.”

She waits a beat to respond, so you take the opportunity to chug a glass of water, suddenly very _very_ thirsty.

“Oh you have no idea…”

You choke so hard that water dribbles out of your nose. Laura watches the whole thing with a pleased smirk.

The fucking tease.

“No but really, I can have some, right Carm? I’m like _super_ hungry right now.”

“Of course you can, the only kind of cupcake that I’m trying to stuff myself with is of the human variety.”

Your voice comes out lower than intended because of your recent choking fiasco, and shit, you meant that to sound suggestive but once you actually said it you realized that it sounds absolutely filthy.

Laura’s eyes widen and she takes a sharp breath in.

“Hmm, maybe for dessert, then."

You’re not sure how she’s managing to beat you at your own game but you’re actually kind of fine with it. You really are hungry though, so you turn around to grab the frosting and decide to revisit that conversation after the two of you have eaten.

Laura seems to be on the same wavelength, because she’s suddenly right at your side and back to the peppy, innocent Laura from earlier.

“Can I help frost them?!”

“Be my guest, Sweetheart. I’m hoping they’ll look better with icing, anyway.”

And you really are hoping that, because your attempt at red velvet came out looking less like the vibrant crimson that the internet promised and more like giant dried up blood clots. At least you tried.

You two settle into an easy process. Laura slaps on way too much frosting and passes the cupcakes to you, and you diligently scrape off half of it in a last-ditch effort to save her from diabetes.

You have to fight back a smile when you take in the way she’s humming happily to herself and making a giant fucking mess of your countertop. How did she even manage to get frosting in her hair?

You watch her absentmindedly scratch her face, leaving a sugary streak of white on her cheek as she does.

Are you struck with the sudden urge to wipe icing on her nose and lick it off like some ridiculous PDA youtube couple?  
Yes.

However, that urge also makes you want to vomit in your mouth, so you refrain from acting on it.

Laura takes a step back once all of the cupcakes have been thoroughly frosted, clapping her hands together and making a happy noise in the back of her throat at the sight of them.

“Huh, well they don’t look half bad, I guess. Hopefully they don’t taste like shit.”

“That’s the spirit, Carm.”

You look over your shoulder after Laura delivers that deadpan statement, but she’s still got a smile on her face. And frosting. There’s literally frosting between her eyebrows.

“I’m sure they’ll be delicious, so thank you. It was really sweet of you to make these.”

You pretend not to hear her and aim your pleased grin at the floor instead. Then you feel take a step closer to you, and you can clearly feel her chest against your back every time you inhale.

Reaching around you to grab a cupcake, Laura moves to settle at the table. Before she does that, though, she places a long, deliberate kiss to your shoulder, directly on the patch of skin that’s left exposed by your tank top.

Well, this is new.

You grab yourself a cupcake as well, sitting down across from her.

“What was that for, Cutie?”

She’s mid-chew when she responds, and you can’t even bring yourself to feel grossed out at the way her half-chewed food rolls around her mouth as she replies.

“I was just doing what your apron said, Carm. Duh.”

You smirk at her.

“Is that so? Hmm, maybe I’ll look into getting an apron that’s a little more explicit then.”

“You’re probably gonna have to custom order it. I don’t think they sell aprons that say ‘fingerfuck the chef’ at Homegoods.”

You find yourself choking again for the second time in an hour.

***

By the time the two of you have had your fill and demolished more than half of the cupcakes, it’s nearing 8AM.

Unfortunately, your body is making it very hard to ignore its desperate pleas for sleep. You give up on hiding these signs after the fifth yawn, and slump further into your chair.

Laura finally takes notice in the middle of a sentence about... something inane and ridiculous, you're guessing.

“…and that’s why I don’t trust miniature animals anymor—oh crap, Carm! You clearly need to sleep, I’m gonna head out, alright?”

“S’okay Creampuff, you don’t need to go—“

“Carmilla, your eyes are already half closed, and as adorable as this scene is, I’ve got errands to run and you have a bed that’s calling your name.”

You snort and mumble ‘rather be calling your name…’ under your breath.

“I heard that, missy.”

You tilt your head towards her and give her a shit-eating grin before returning to your earlier position with your cheek resting on top of your crossed arms.

“Why’re you running errands on your day off? Who does that? Go do somethin' fun.”

“No can do, unfortunately, my ‘something fun’ needs to go to bed. Plus, errands are fun too!”

You snort again and shake your head, which currently feels like it’s full of sand. You know that Laura just said something suggestive but honestly you can’t muster up enough energy to figure it out, let alone respond in kind.

Laura starts to stand up and put her plate in the sink, and she’s slipping her boots back on by the time you manage to follow her lead and drag your lazy ass up, too.

“Thanks for coming over, Cutie, I had a really nice time.”

Laura smiles brightly at you.

“Me too Carm, thanks for having me.”

Your smile turns into a pout.

“Haven’t had you yet.”

Laura laughs at that, and you’re pretty sure you hear her mutter ‘all in good time,’ but your mind could just be playing tricks on you.

Laura’s hand is on the doorknob so you lean in to kiss her on the cheek, which has sort of become a regular thing between the two of you.

She turns her head though, and even through the fog of exhaustion you can tell that it’s a deliberate move.

Trusting that she’ll stop you if she wants to, you lean in the rest of the way and then you’re kissing her.

Like, full on, lips against lips, and you can feel Laura smiling against your mouth.

You immediately bring your hands to her waist and deepen the kiss.

She entertains your actions for a moment, but all too soon she’s pulling away. She’s got your bottom lip caught between her teeth though, so she’s only really dragging you further into her personal space, which you’re totally on board with.

Releasing your lip and giving you one more chaste kiss, she backs away to make some space between you.

“Just so you know, I’ve wanted to do that for a while now.”

Her eyes are so so bright, and there’s a faint dusting of pink on her cheeks that’s telling you she’s being honest.

“God Laura, me too, like, you’ve got no fucking idea…”

“Oh believe me Carm, I think I do.”

She winks at you before pressing a slightly longer but still disappointingly chaste kiss to the corner of your mouth, not moving back at all before she starts to speak.

“We’ll discuss _that_ later though, right now, you need to get some rest and _I_ need to get some groceries. We can’t all survive on cupcakes, you know.”

“Mmm but I’d fucking love to try.”

Laura groans quietly and gives the side of your jaw a gentle nip.

“Enough of that, smooth talker! You’re _really_ testing my self control right now, but I want you to be awake when we take things further. So I’m gonna leave, and you’re gonna sleep, and the next time I see you I’m gonna kiss your stupidly perfect face for at least an hour.”

You whine at the loss of body heat when she steps away and opens the door, but offer a quiet goodbye nonetheless. 

Walking back to your window, you watch her get to her car and do a little gay happy dance before stepping inside of it, complete with fist pumps and the running man and everything.

You fling yourself into bed with a massive smile on your face as soon as you see her car pull away, and for once, you’re too fucking happy to bother with self-doubt or second-guessing what just happened.

When you wake up five hours later you’re still smiling.

* * *

You get home from work on the one week anniversary of your first kiss with Laura and the one month anniversary of the end of your shitbaby antics, and decide to cook real food instead of slapping together another sandwich that tastes like how depression feels.

So tonight’s menu features breakfast potatoes and a few glasses of gin, because you have nothing else to cook with the potatoes and fuck it, why not get a little tipsy. It’ll just make your poorly cooked entree taste better, anyway. You read over the recipe again, and it sounds simple enough.

 

Boil potatoes.

Dry potatoes.

Chop potatoes.

Fry potatoes.

Don’t die in the process.

 

It sounds like a Doctor Seuss rhyme. Minus the last line, maybe.

You’re at minute five of your dinner prep, and so far the water hasn’t even come to a boil. In that moment, you realize how long the breakfast potato process is going to take and immediately start cursing yourself. Why do you have to boil the little fuckers before you cook them?

Twenty minutes later, once they’ve been boiled successfully, you’re met with another question.

Why do they take so fucking long to cool off?! When you first embarked on this culinary adventure you didn’t anticipate having to wait so long between each step, too.

Is it because the gods hate you and take great pleasure in watching you literally play hot potato with yourself, tossing the molten devil-spuds between your hands when you grab one to start chopping them?

Probably.

Are you being overdramatic?

Also probably.

In your defense, you’re really hungry and really _really_ impatient. This hot potato experience might just result in you learning how to juggle though, and Laura’s enough of a fucking dork to appreciate that skill, so all in all you feel like the situation could probably be worse.

Ten minutes later you’re shuffling around to the new Now, Now single as you chop the still-too-hot potatoes into manageable pieces, making a legitimate effort to avoid losing a digit. Once that’s complete, you’re flinging a pat of butter into your frying pan with slightly too much zeal. It lands on the oven’s surface with a splat, but luckily it doesn't wind up hitting the burner itself.

Attempt #2 ends with the butter actually making it into the pan, which earns a subtle and not at all embarrassing fist pump from you as you spin around to grab the plate of chopped potatoes. You’ve never, not once in your life, _fist pumped_ before you met Laura.

Part of you wonders if that’s a sign that you should change your name and move back to L.A., but you reason that her presence and her lips and her laughter are all more than enough to outweigh one slightly-questionable trait.

Dumping the food into your frying pan and finally being able to sniff out an aroma that actually smells like you’re making something edible, you repress the urge to shimmy around the kitchen and chant the phrase ‘Hotdish’ repeatedly like a proud midwesterner.

You’re assuming that this is something they do every time a hockey mom successfully produces a casserole. Not that you’d fucking know, of course, but you still think it’s a nice sentiment, regardless. You’re pretty sure the only time the phrase ‘thank you for this casserole’ is uttered is after a funeral, and maybe hockey moms should get some casserole-related praise, too.

Then you realize that everything you thought in the last five minutes is basically garbage, akin to Laura’s ‘why we should all respect laminators’ speech. So you decide to just stop thinking altogether. Plus, you’re not even making a fucking casserole, anyway.

You lean back against your kitchen table while the potatoes cook, eyes absentmindedly but still resolutely glued to the inside of Laura’s apartment. You’re beginning to zone out when you spot a flash of color dart from Laura’s bathroom to her bedroom.

Then you’re basically dying as you watch Laura walk casually from her bedroom back to her bathroom, hair dripping wet and body clad in only a loosely wrapped towel.

So loosely wrapped, in fact, that it slips mid-step and leaves you with an eyeful of Laura’s perfect fucking ass.

You unconsciously lean toward the window and wind up gripping your countertop, desperately trying not to whine at the image you were just graced with. When you find yourself in the same exact position a few minutes later, you realize that your deep breathing hasn’t helped with a single goddamn thing and that all you’ve really accomplished is keeping your thighs pressed together tight enough to keep your arousal stoked, and biting your lip so hard that you draw blood.

You force yourself to straighten.

Or well, your posture, at least.

Leaning your head back to take another (useless) deep breath, you’re met with the distinct smell of something burning.

The fucking potatoes!

Somewhere out there, a Minnesotan mother is weeping. You feel like you’ve disappointed Vince Vaughn. 

A quick glance to the stove confirms your fears.

Those fuckers are on fire. Like, solidly aflame.

Acting on a wave of panicked adrenaline and the animalistic drive not to die while wearing an ironic shirt with a picture of Steve Buscemi on it, you snatch up the flaming pan, wrench open your door, and attempt to scramble down your back steps into the snow.

As you’re doing this, though, you make the mistake of glancing over at Laura’s property and catch her bent over, shoveling out her car. And oh god. The memories. Naked skin.

Her ass will be the death of you.

Maybe literally.

The split-second distraction is enough to leave you vulnerable to your surroundings, and you’re slipping backward on a patch of ice before you can even register it. You’re falling, eyes still fixed on Laura because you’re pathetically gay and entirely infatuated with her. Before you know it, you’ve landed on your ass and you’re sliding down the three steps that lead to your backyard. One flailing arm tosses the flaming pan into a snowbank though, so you’ll count that as a win. You honestly thought that, with your luck, the pan would get launched backward and smash through your window like an impromptu molotov cocktail of disappointment.

You must’ve shouted something during your fall, because a panicked Laura is at your side before you can even register that your stair-sliding adventure has come to a gentle stop on your bottom step.

“Ohmygod! Carmilla, are you okay?! Why did you light your frying pan on fire?! And more importantly, why do you own a shirt with Steve Buscemi on it?!?”

***

You spend the next few minutes letting Laura haul you back into your kitchen and answering her questions.

_Yes, you’re okay._

_The fire wasn’t intentional, clearly. If you’d meant for it to happen then you wouldn’t have looked so shocked._

And,

_Because he’s fucking cool as shit, even if he does look like a dehydrated worm._

Laura rolls her eyes at the majority of your answers, but she still gives you a lingering, openmouthed kiss for your troubles, so you’ll deal.

“Alright Master Chef, I know you said that you’re fine, but it really did look like a nasty fall, are you sure you’re not hurt?”

You squint at her to convey your displeasure at the new nickname.

“Other than my bruised ego…?”

You wiggle around slightly, trying to gauge what parts of you are causing the constant dull pain that you’re currently experiencing.

“I think I probably hurt my elbow, and maybe my back? And I for sure did a number on my ass.”

“That’s what she said.”

“Really, Laura?”

“What?! You set yourself up for it!”

You shrug,

“Eh, fair enough.”

Laura fist pumps in response and _there’s that fucking move again._ Your eyelid twitches with the urge to wrap her in a bearhug so she’ll stop doing that. Because it looks ridiculous. And every time she does it it makes you want to boop her on the nose or do something else that’s equally as mushy and adoring.

You are not mushy and adoring.

You are the night.

You are— currently being examined by the Creampuff?

Laura must see the look of concentration that usually signifies an intense internal debate on your face, because she starts moving a pencil in front of your face and tells you to follow it with your eyes.

You sigh.

“I don’t have a fucking concussion, Cupcake.”

She immediately drops the pencil and pretends that she wasn’t just waving it around in front of you like a goddamn nerd.

“Fine, I’ll take your word for it. _But,_ I’m calling in sick today so I can make sure you don’t pass out and die or anything. I need to grab my phone and my first aid kit, I’ll be right back! Don’t move!”

And with that, she’s gone.

***

When she returns, she’s got a comically large survival kit tucked under one arm and her phone held up to her ear with the other.

“No— No Danny it’s fine, I’m fine, I didn’t say that anybody was on fire— No! Y— you definitely _do not_ need to come help, I’ve got it all under control,”

Laura makes eye contact with you and proceeds to pull off an impressive full body eye roll.

“I— Danny— I already told you, my gir— my _friend_ — my neighb— _Yes._  Yes, my Carmilla. Carmilla fell, and I’m staying home to make sure she’s alright. Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. Ye— got it— mhm, alright bye!”

Laura hangs up and drops her phone on the counter before giving it a quick glare.

“That sounded fun. You sure you’re able to take the day off and lose all that time with _Danny_ , Creampuff? I swear I’m fine. I can take care of myself, you know."

You know that your tone is probably a little more biting than it should be, but hearing Danny’s name again just pisses you off. You haven’t actually been able to bring yourself to address what the fuck went on with the ‘business’ dinner that launched you into a snarling pit of despair, but in your defense, Laura hasn’t brought it up either. You’re assuming that it’ll come up naturally at some point, and that you and Laura will have a good laugh over how you got so worked up over nothing. Actually you have no idea how it’s going to play out, but you’re definitely praying that it doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass.

At least this time Danny’s name wasn’t said with any fondness on Laura’s part.

“Fun is _definitely_ not how I would’ve described that interaction, but yes, it’s fine, I promise. I know that you can take care of yourself, I just want to be here with you, alright? And I’m serious about watching you to make sure that you don’t die, because — and I don’t know if you can tell — but I’m pretty fond of you.”

She pauses.

“Just how you are.”

Another pause.

“Ergo, alive.”

You refrain from rolling your eyes, because sometimes this girl can be longwinded to a fault.

“ _Yes_ Laura, I think I understand.”

Your tone is significantly warmer this time, and her smile gets infinitely brighter at that.

“Okay! Uhm, alright, so if you think you’re mostly hurting because of your back, you should probably go lay down so we can check it out.”

You raise an eyebrow at her suggestively.

“Well well well, Cutie, if you wanted to get me horizontal you could’ve just asked.”

“This is for first aid purposes, Carm! Get your mind out of the gutter!”

 _Pfft_. As if your mind is _ever_ out of the gutter. It would probably own a condo there if it had a better credit score.

“Whatever you say, Sweetheart. I’m not laying down on my kitchen floor though, god knows what’s caked onto it at this point. So it’s your lucky day, you’re officially being invited into my bedroom.”

You stand up and begin to walk down the short hallway that leads out of your kitchen, hearing Laura grumbling behind you.

“How’re you even gonna say it all seductive like that? You literally just fell down the stairs you giant annoying sexy asshole…”

“I heard that.”

“I wasn’t trying to whisper, Carm. Just go lay down already!”

“Will do, nurse Hollis.”

***

“You should probably take off your shirt.”

That’s the first thing Laura says when she get’s into your bedroom.

You’re okay with that.

“Got something against Steve Buscemi, Cupcake?”

“No, but I’d also like to not be staring directly at his face right now. And plus, I need to check your back, remember?”

You stand up briefly to yank the shirt over your head, tossing it into the corner that you’ve designated as your makeshift hamper before flopping back down onto your stomach and turning your head to face Laura.

“Excuses, excuses. I also said that my ass hurt, should I take my pants off too?”

You think you hear Laura gulp, but you can’t be certain. Her voice is annoyingly steady when she talks next, though.

“Hmm, that might actually be a good idea. Lose the pants, Karnstein.”

You hesitate for a second because honestly, you weren’t expecting her to agree with your suggestion. You’re game, though, _so_ game.

Laura must take your hesitation the wrong way, because after a few moments she’s backpedaling fast.

“As long as that’s alright with you, of course, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable! We don’t have to do anything, I swear, I can just leave right now and let you sleep it off if that’s what you need—“

“Laura! Calm down, Sundance, I’m totally fine, I promise. Please, don’t leave. Okay?”

You begin shimmying your pants down awkwardly, only slightly regretting your choice to wear skinny jeans. Laura whispers an ‘okay’ in response, and then you feel her hands on your hips and she’s helping you maneuver until you’re free from the constricting denim.

As soon as your legs are bare, you try to glance back at yourself discreetly. With a sigh of relief, you remember that you chose to wear nice underwear today, lacy boy shorts that cut high on your hips instead of the absolutely trashy pair of boyshorts Mattie gave you as a gag gift a few holidays ago that said 'here's your vegan option.'

You think that Laura may have just taken notice of them, too, because you’re sure you hear her let out a shaky exhale and murmur ‘oh shit.’ You grin into your pillow, happy to be on the receiving end of that reaction.

After a moment of static silence, with neither of you taking a step further, you decide to tease her.

“Didn’t take you for an ass girl, Doctor Cupcake.”

“Honestly I’m usually more of a tits girl, myself. But I can always make an exception for something spectacular.”

You laugh and give a little wiggle before responding.

“Hm, it’s a shame I didn’t fall on my front then, eh? Maybe next time, Cutie.”

You can hear Laura take a few steps closer toward where you’re laying down, and you hold your breath.

“Uh— yeah, yup, it’s a— it’s a shame.”

Feeling her eyes raking over you, you try your hardest not to shiver.

“B-but quit distracting me, Carm! Oh my god, you actually have a nasty bruise on your lower back!”

You angle one arm behind you, trying to feel where this apparent bruise is, but you’re not successful.

“Wait no, Carm it’s like right over here,”

She moves your arm until you’re able to place a hand on the spot, wincing as you do.

“Is it alright if I sit on the bed with you? J-just to like, show you where you’re hurt.”

You take a deep breath to calm your suddenly racing heart.

“Yeah, go for it. Here, just straddle my thighs.”

This time you definitely hear Laura’s ‘oh good lord,’ and you _definitely_ let out a loud laugh in response.

Without further ado, Laura settles onto the backs of your thighs. And you weren’t expecting her weight on top of you to feel so good but fuck, it does.

“Alright, so other than that bruise, I don’t see much of anything else on your back… uhm…”

You can feel her eyes scanning over you again, but this time it draws out a noticeable shiver and you can literally _feel_ the waves of smug that radiate off of her.

“Looks like you’ve got a bit of a cut above your left elbow, too, stay still and I’ll get it fixed up in a second.”

You do as she says and sure enough, you’re sporting a nifty new bandage a minute later.

“Anything else, Doc?”

“Not that I can see…”

She runs her palms lightly over your arms, your sides, your shoulders, and then back down your spine until they rest near the bruise on your lower back.

“This is— this is gonna sound like a really bad come-on, but do you still think your ass is bruised?”

“Don’t worry Creampuff, I can’t say that I’ve heard that particular phrase in any porno before, you’re fine,”

You take another deep breath, enjoying the way Laura’s hands rise and fall with the movement of your back.

“But honestly, yeah I’m pretty sure there’s gonna be a… _measurable mark on my moneymaker_.”

You’re met with silence.

And then she backhands your shoulder blade.

“Carmilla! I’m being all serious and medical doctor-y! Please refrain from the use of alliterations from this point forward, _capisce_?”

“Laura, please tell me you haven’t suddenly joined the mob.”

“Uh, no?”

“Good. Okay I’ll make you a deal, I won’t make any more alliterations, and you won’t _ever_ use the word capisce again.”

“Deal!”

“Deal.”

It’s silent again, and you’re not sure if being forward will help or hinder the situation right now.

“Hey Cutie, should I take off my underwear, orrr?”

“Y-y-you don’t have to do that!!! I’ll just, like, shift it down a little to see if there’s any major bruising. Capis—"

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. We had a deal.”

“I’m sorry! For some reason I always overuse some random word when I’m nervous, you’re lucky I didn’t wind up with ‘tubular’ this time!”

“Oh my god Laura, take a deep breath. You’re definitely gonna have to expand upon this little nervous habit of yours, like, I want examples, but that can wait until later. Could you please just check to make sure I’m not dying?"

Her response is an eager squeak.

“Okay!”

And with that, she’s shuffling back a little. She moves so that she’s no longer straddling your upper thighs with the majority of her weight being balanced on her knees, and now she’s settled with her ass resting right above the backs of your knees and her own knees framing your hips, deliciously solid above you.

When she shifts again you can feel her more firmly, and suddenly you’re remembering exactly what got you into this situation. The irony of the fact that her ass is both the reason why you’re hurt and the reason why you feel so good right now isn’t lost on you.

You’re jolted back into the present when the crotch of your underwear tugs up against your center slightly, and you hold back the moan that’s building in your throat as Laura hesitantly pushes the lace covering one asscheek up so she can quickly inspect your flesh. You shift until your arms are folded like a pillow beneath your cheek, trying to hide the way you’re biting your lip.

“O-okay, you’re all good on the right side, no bruising or anything.”

You just nod rapidly, not trusting your voice at this point.

Laura shifts to the left, tugging at the waistband of your underwear while also guiding the lace covering your left side up higher, and the result on your end is a much firmer pressure against your core. You really can’t suppress the gasp this time, and you feel Laura’s hips shift, grinding forward ever so slightly.

You hate that she’s wearing dress pants right now. Not only does it seem impractical, it’s also fucking killing you to have any barriers keeping the two of you from being skin to skin. You’d sell both of your fucking kidneys if it meant that you could feel her naked against you.

“All clear here, too… Is there anywhere in particular that you can feel the pain, Carm?”

Now _that, that_ sounds like it could be an opening line in a porno. Laura sounds sincere though, so you don’t make fun of her.

Instead, you reach behind yourself blindly until you find her wrist, guiding her hand until her fingers are grazing over a patch of skin that doesn’t _hurt_ necessarily, but maybe might have a bruise? Honestly you’re kind of stalling at this point, because you really don’t want to lose the feeling of her so close to you.

You feel Laura pull the waistband of your underwear down again, this time tugging until the whole thing sits low on your hips, probably giving you a horribly unattractive plumbers’ crack, but such is life.

“Holy shit Carm, yeah you’ve got a hell of a bruise here!”

“Wait really?”

“Uh, y-yeah? Isn’t that why you told me to check here?”

“Yeah, totally! Pff, duh…”

“Ooookay. Honestly I don’t think there’s anything that I can do about this one, I mean I have some Arnica gel which might help, but otherwise you’re just gonna have to take it easy and wait for it to heal.”

“Creampuff, I have no fucking idea what an Arnica gel is, but if you think it’ll help then I’ll take your word for it. Go ahead and work your spooky Minnesotan medical magic.”

“Carm, they sell Arnica gel at Target. It’s nothing fancy— you know what never mind.”

You haven’t actually absorbed any of what she just said before you agreed to it, so it comes as a shock when she’s suddenly rubbing some cold, slippery liquid into the flesh at the top of your ass.

You yelp.

Like a fucking loser.

Her hands still immediately.

“Are you alright?!”

“I’m fine! K-keep going, I’m fine.”

You shift slightly and press your thighs together while Laura continues to massage the whatever-the-fuck gel into your back for another minute or two. You won’t tell her this, but you actually do feel less achy.

“All set! Just take things slowly for the next few days and you should be feeling better in no time!”

Her extra enthusiasm doesn’t manage to cover the quiver in her voice, and you feel marginally better about your current state when you realize that she’s clearly somewhat affected by the situation, too.

The room is still for what feels like a small eternity, and right as you think that Laura’s about to climb off of your thighs and make some excuse to head back to her own apartment, you feel her lean over your back and place a long, firm kiss dead center on your back.

And you moan.

Because you’re not made of fucking glass and honestly how do you even wind up in these kinds of situations?

She plants another kiss to your spine, higher up this time, and the feeling has you rocking your hips back minutely and whimpering into your pillow.

“Fuck, Carm…”

It’s not a question, not a prompt, hardly even a statement, really. But you know exactly how this is all going to play out, now.

And then she’s shifting back up your body until she can rest comfortably, straddling your ass right below the bruise and tugging your shoulders up towards her. The movement brings your head up too, and she immediately presses your mouths together.

There’s no hesitation between the two of you, and in a split second your lips are slotting together over and over and you swear you almost cry when her tongue slips into your mouth.

You keep kissing until you physically can’t anymore, the awkward angle leaving you with an uncomfortable crick in your neck. You drop back down onto your chest heavily, trying and failing to keep your hips still, to keep from rocking down against the mattress in a desperate and honestly slightly juvenile search for friction.

At this point, Laura’s completely covering your upper body. Her hands run repeatedly up and down your sides, each time ghosting slightly closer to your breasts, and you can feel her hot breath against your skin from where she’s got her forehead pressed against your shoulder, panting like she just ran a marathon.

“Laura, is this okay? We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

She grinds her hips against your ass again, harder this time, before sucking a hickey into the nape of your neck.

“God Carm, this is so okay, like a ‘please let’s keep going’ kind of okay. There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now,”

Another hard grind against your ass,

“I even called in sick, remember?”

You laugh quietly, and then choke on a moan when Laura repositions herself to straddle only one of your thighs. Suddenly she’s got a knee nudging right up against your center and your hands claw into your pillow as you begin absentmindedly thrusting back against her.

“I— _fuck—_ I remember, b-but, if you’re clearly not going to work, could you maybe— _oh god, more—_ maybe lose the slacks and a-adorable little button up? I’m f-feeling mighty underdressed right now.”

You want to cry, like literally burst into tears, when you feel Laura’s weight leave you. But after turning your head to follow the noise of her movements, you think those tears would definitely be of the happy variety.

She’s getting naked.

For you.

Holy fucking divine mother of shit.

No matter how many girls you’ve had do this same exact thing, none of them ever drew the same reaction from you that Laura’s getting right now. The rush of sticky wet heat that floods your boy shorts is slightly embarrassing, mildly uncomfortable, and completely fucking unexpected.

You watch with rapt attention as Laura slips out of her work pants before deftly unbuttoning her top and tossing it to the floor, not hesitating to continue undressing as she unsnaps her bra and lets it drop down as well. She doesn’t break eye contact once.

You want to make a joke about her underwear. One of those ‘nice panties, you know where they’d look better? On the floor with the rest of your clothes’ jokes. But you don’t because you think you’d swallow your tongue if you tried to speak.

She pivots slightly, the asshole part of your brain that suddenly wants to think about math offers you an estimated angle of 56°, and then she’s hooking her thumbs into her waistband and slowly slipping the fabric down her thighs.

When you’re met with the view of her ass again, the very ass that inadvertently put this whole show in motion, you give an involuntary thrust against your bed. Laura laughs quietly at your reaction before turning back to face you fully and gracelessly kicking her underwear away from where it had pooled on her ankle.

You go to sit up, to reach out for her and pull her towards you so you can bury your face in her tits and run your fingers through the neat, albeit visibly damp patch of hair above her pussy, but she keeps you flush to the mattress with a hand against your shoulder.

“Let me take care of you first Carm, do you want that?”

You nod wordlessly and she unclasps your bra, letting your arch your back so she can pull the fabric out from under you. You gasp at the sensation of the bedsheets rubbing across your nipples, which are stiff to the point of being painful.

She slips back behind you for a moment, letting her fingers slide around the waistband of your underwear until you give her a nod, and then she’s tugging them down your legs and off past your feet, humming in the back of her throat as she does so.

“Carm, god… You look like, really, _really,_ fucking good, all wet and twitchy and desperate for me…”

And holy _shit._

You didn’t expect the outwardly prim and proper Laura Hollis to be a fucking talker.

But of course she is.

It’s like the universe is conspiring against you to get you to come before she even touches you.

She straddles your legs again, this time sitting back towards your knees, presumably so she can get a better view of what she’s doing to you. Her thighs squeeze tight, forcing your legs together and pulling a moan from you as you finally get a taste of friction.

She whines, this time high-pitched and needy, and you mimic the sound when she just barely grazes two fingers over the swell of your pussy lips.

“Holy— do you have any idea how fucking delicious you look right now, Carmilla?”

You don’t think you could answer her, even if it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“You’re, oh my god—“

She grinds against your thighs and you can clearly feel her leave a wet streak in her wake.

“You’re _shining,_ and, god, you’re so fucking swollen, like, holy crap _.”_

Then she’s shifting above you, climbing back so that she’s once again straddling only one thigh before pulling you up onto your hands and knees.

The hand that had been dragging slowly across your folds moves, wrapping around your stomach and reaching down, down down down past wiry hair until she’s got you in the palm of her hand. Literally.

She squeezes lightly, and you immediately roll your hips to press harder into her hand.

“So wet, so fucking wet, is all of this for me, Carm?”

You manage to form words, only when she lessens the pressure of her hand and you think that speaking is the only way to get her to grab you again.

“Yeah— yes, yes, fuck Sweetheart, yes, it’s all for you, of course it’s fucking all for you, oh my _god—“_

You’re cut off by the feeling of a singular fingertip circling your clit. And then you really can’t wait anymore. Also your arms are getting tired.

Dropping down so that you’re laying flush against the mattress before bending one knee up toward your chest to make sure she can still get to your cunt, you begin to beg.

“Lauralauralaura please! Just— just please fuck me!”

Your whole body lurches slightly higher up the bed when you feel her start to circle around your entrance, quickly adjusting to the unfamiliar feeling of fingers coming from behind you.

“Tell me what you need, Carm, go on…”

You have literally no filter or sense of shame when you’re like this, and suddenly you’re grateful for that because you think Laura might actually refuse to fuck you if you don’t tell her exactly what she wants to hear.

“Inside, Laura, I need you to push your fingers inside of me, and then I need you to fuck me, please!"

She does exactly as you ask, and a moment later you’re gasping into your pillow as two fingers slip into you easily and begin a teasing, shallow rhythm.

“M-more?”

Laura hums in response, beginning to push her fingers in a little bit harder, but at the same slow pace. You’re about to complain again, but then she starts to press her fingers down and drags them against your spot every time she pulls out of you and you decide to just let her do her thing, spreading your legs wider for her.

She laughs gently after a moment.

“Hm, you like that, don’t you babe?”

Her term of endearment makes you clench around her and bury your face in the crook of your elbow, not wanting to reveal how flustered she’s making you.

Laura lets out another little half-groan-half-laugh noise at the way you squeeze her fingers.

“I’ll take that as a yes then, can you show me how badly you need to come, Carm? Will you do that for me?”

You’re honestly not sure what she’s even asking, but you whine an affirmative regardless.

You pretty much immediately forget what she had said, though, focusing all of your attention on the way she feels inside of you and the filthy wet clicking noises her fingers make every time she bottoms out and her knuckles slap against your folds.

“Come on, Carmilla, show me what you need."

You begin rutting back against her, trying to take her deeper and faster and harder because you need _more._ Lifting up slightly onto one elbow, you wriggle your now free hand down to your pussy, mouth opening in a soundless scream when you gently pinch your clit between your middle and pointer fingers.

Apparently that’s what Laura was looking for, because she lets out a responding ‘oh fuck’ and drapes herself fully over you, thighs slotted between yours like clasped fingers. You both cry out simultaneously when she uses her new position to add the force of her hips into each thrust; you because she’s hitting you so deep that you feel like the world could end and you wouldn’t even notice, and her because she’s finally able to find some friction in the form of her clit against the top of your thigh.

“M-mmfuck— More, please Laura, more fingers!”

Her rhythm stops for a moment and you whimper at the loss, but then she’s slowly adding a third finger into the mix and you feel so fucking full.

“Holy ffff-fuck, Laura!”

She picks up the pace again and you don’t think you’ve ever felt this good in your entire life. But then she starts talking and proves you wrong. You’ve noticed that she does that a lot.

Both the talking part and the proving you wrong part.

“Jesus Carm, you feel so good around me, you’re taking me so well babe, god you look so fucking wrecked…”

You moan, long and low and desperate, because Laura just started slamming into you faster

than you thought was even possible.

You bite into your pillow and circle your clit, trying and failing to match her pace but you don’t even fucking care because you’re about to come.

“I can feel you pulsing around me Carm, are you gonna come for me?”

“Yes! Yes Laura pleasepleasepl—“

“Not yet.”

You can’t do anything more than gasp when her weight suddenly leaves you, along with her fingers, and you feel so empty without her on you, in you.

“Wha-why’d you s-stop?”

Laura sounds pretty fucking wrecked too when she replies, but it doesn’t stop her from being a cheeky little shit.

“Just wanted to see what you’d do, honestly. I also wanted to admire my handiwork for a second.”

You’re trying to come back with any kind of retort, preferably one that’ll get her to make you come, but your mind is blank right now and for some reason the only thing you can think of is that ‘I didn’t get no sleep cause of y’all’ gif with the woman banging two pans together. Leave it to your fucking brain to bring memes into the picture at a time like this.

It’s not super helpful.

So you just go back to begging, it seemed pretty effective before.

“P-please,”

“Please what?”

“Fuck me Laura, please!”

“Well, you asked so nicely so I guess I could just…”

She leaves her sentence hanging and shifts above you once more, this time scooting right up against you and sinking back on her heels. She drags her hand down over your back before letting it drift to your entrance again, palm-side down, and slowly pushes three fingers back into you, nudging one knee up against your pussy to increase the pressure.

And then, with a hushed command of ‘rub your clit,’ Laura’s pistoning her curled fingers inside of you with short deep thrusts, hardly pulling out at all and instead rocking down into you repeatedly.

You feel her free hand grasp your asscheek, and she spreads you apart with a low moan.

“O-oh my fff— Carm holy shit… I can literally see you pulsing around me and it’s so fucking hot, oh my god…”

Her breathy narration makes you cry out brokenly, and you feel like you should be embarrassed at how exposed you are, at the wet ‘stirring a pot of mac n’ cheese’ porn noises she’s creating with her fingers, but you don’t give a shit.

You’re not sure how long you last after that, could’ve been half a minute or half an hour, but before you know it you’re coming.

Laura’s thrusting stops but she continues to massage the spongy patch inside of you with her fingertips and you press up into your clit as hard as you can. Every muscle in your body feels tight, and frankly it’s kind of painful for your recently injured bits, but you’d take the pain a million times over if it meant that you could still experience the absolute bliss that you’re currently experiencing.

You don’t know what noises you’re making or what words you’re saying, or if you’re even making any sound at all, every single one of your senses besides touch might as well be nonexistent right now.

You ride out the last waves of your orgasm with shaky, stuttered movements before emptying yourself into Laura’s palm and collapsing bonelessly, ignoring the fact that you’re pinning your arm beneath your body.

You stay just like that for a few minutes, Laura rubbing soothing patterns across your body and peppering kisses across your shoulder blades.

Just when you think that you might pass out, you feel Laura lifting you back onto your hands and knees, and for a moment you’re met with the distinct lack of the cupcake’s body against yours and vague shuffling noises.

Then Laura’s in front of you, the fucking nerd having slithered her way up underneath your body until you’re face to face with her.

“Hi there!”

“Wha—you— holy shit, Creampuff.”

She beams at you, pupils blown wide and bottom lip swollen, you’re assuming it’s from biting it as she fucked you, and honestly she’s a goddamn vision.

She kisses you, slow and deep, before sinking back against your pillow with a satisfied sigh.

“Based on the way I’ve got your cum drying halfway up my forearm, I’m gonna make an educated guess and say that you enjoyed yourself?”

“H-holy shit.”

“I’ll take that as a yes?”

“You can take whatever the fuck you want if it makes me come that hard, Sweetheart.”

She laughs and you lean in to kiss her, not pulling up for air until she’s squirming and panting below you.

You’re about to go back for seconds when you’re interrupted by an embarrassingly loud growl coming from your stomach.

Oh yeah.

Your dinner lit on fire.

You recap an abbreviated timeline of your night/morning, trying to make sense of how you got here.

Came home.

Started cooking.

Saw Laura’s ass.

Got distracted.

Food turned into a bonfire.

Saw Laura’s ass again.

Got distracted again.

Fell down the stairs.

First aid from Laura.

Sexual healing from Laura.

You figure that that sounds about right, nodding shortly to yourself.

‘Consumed food’ is nowhere to be seen on your timeline, and before you return the favor and fuck Laura’s brain out you’re going to need carbs.

Displaying far more grace and energy than would be expected from someone who’s been awake for nearly 22 hours and hasn’t eaten in 12, you scramble off the bed and tell a startled Laura that you’ll be right back. You almost eat shit when your foot gets caught on the leg of Laura’s work slacks as you’re racing out of the bedroom, and you steadfastly ignore the way she laughs and goes _‘wr-wr-wrecked’_ under her breath.

Returning to your room not three minutes later, you almost drop your handful of cookies at the sight you’re met with.

As it is, the way your jaw goes slack accidentally releases the cookie you’d had between your teeth when you walked in. You really can’t afford to lose any more sustenance right now, so you carefully place the one cookie back into your mouth and the rest on the pile of cardboard that acts as your nightstand. Your eyes don’t leave Laura once as you settle onto the foot of your bed.

Laura.

Who’s propped against your pillows, eye’s closed and mouth sporting a smug grin.

Smug, peaceful Laura, who’s knuckle deep inside of herself.

She cracks one eye open and smiles at you. You can’t tear your eyes away from the hand between her legs, which is currently speeding up, and good fucking god.

“Oh hey, I was wondering when you were coming back.”

“Holy shit.”

“You brought cookies? Sweet!”

“Holy shit.”

“Did I break you?”

“Holy shit.”

You mumble the words around the cookie that’s still only halfway into your mouth. Then Laura’s leaning up towards you and stealing that cookie for herself. You don’t complain because she gives you her fingers to taste instead.

You lick them clean with a moan.

It should’ve been expected, what with the amount of sugar she consumes on the daily, but Laura literally tastes sweet. Of course there’s the underlying sharp, tangy, ‘you’ve effectively just licked a vagina’ taste, but first and foremost, she tastes like honey.

You abandon the cookies in favor of something better.

Without a word, you shuffle further up your bed on your knees, dropping to all fours once you’re on top of Laura again.

She’s looking steadily at you, hand frozen halfway to her mouth and with a dangerously tight grip on the cookie she took from you earlier. Stealing a bite of said cookie before licking up Laura’s finger again, you swallow with a pleased hum.

“Y’know Cupcake, I think you might just be on to something here…”

She raises her eyebrows in a ‘by all means, continue,’ kind of way, and you grin at her.

“We should go into the dessert business, I can see it now: Hollstein’s World Famous Cookies and Cunt Ice Cream.”

Laura snorts and nearly chokes on her food, but manages to cough it out with a laugh.

“You’re a genius, Carm. And also disgusting. And also also maybe suggesting cannibalism?”

“No cannibalism involved, I swear. Just some good ol’ fashioned pussy eating. It’s America’s favorite pastime.”

“I thought that was baseball?”

“Only if you’re a fucking loser.”

“Oh, fair enough.”

You peck her on the lips.

“Anyway, that’s my business proposal. I suggest you mull it over.”

“Hmm… I think I might need a hands-on reminder about _why_ it’s America’s favorite pastime before I make any major investments. Care to lend a hand with that?"

“Sure, I’ve got a bat and a spare glove in my closet, let me just—“

She slaps you on the shoulder and you burst out laughing.

“Carmilla! Fucking—ugh—Carm, I’m _way_ too horny to be dealing with your twisted sense of humor right now. And did you just call me a loser— actually no, never mind. Here, to continue your little food-business-as-oral-sex allegory: one pussy eating, coming up. Or going down. As in you. On me. Like, you, going down. With your mouth. On my vagina. Which is attached to me, because I’m a person. With a vagina. That would like some attention within the next thirty seconds. So if you could get right to it that’d be great, because I’m like three words away from starting to say ‘capisce’ again and—"

You gently cover her mouth with your hand.

Holy fucking hell, this girl is insane.

Or insanely horny.

Or both?

Brushing away the lingering question of ‘ _could this be considered an episode of hysteria?,’_ you uncover Laura’s mouth but keep a single finger over her lips.

Because you hate the word ‘capisce’ and you’re not taking any fucking chances. 

“Cupcake, if you wanted me to eat your cunt you could’ve just said so. You didn’t have to beat around the bush.”

She splutters beneath your finger for a moment before locking her gaze onto your face, and she must see the laugh you’re fighting to hold back because her eyes narrow into suspicious slits. Then they widen slightly, eyebrows still furrowed, and she gives you the ‘I know where you’re trying to go with this’ look.

“Nuh uh— Carmilla Karnstein don’t you fucking dare sidetrack me from my potential orgasm for a longwinded joke about beating off and pubic hair!”

You pout at her.

“ _Potential_ orgasm? Your lack of faith wounds me, Sundance. Lucky for you though, I have a penchant for being petty, so most of my actions are driven by a burning desire to make people eat their words… which _means…_ you better buckle up, Creampuff, because you’re officially the sole passenger on the Karnstein Multiple Orgasm Express and you’ve got a one-way ticket to Come-So-Hard-You-Black-Out-And-Ruin-My-Sheets City.”

You move your legs so you can push your knee up against Laura’s center, and you grin at the wetness you find there and the moan that your movement tears from her throat. Bending down to kiss her, she waits until your lips are an inch away from hers before she starts talking again. You sigh and sit back up.

“Might I ask how many other girls have ridden this so-called Karnstein Multiple Orgasm Express?" 

“You’re the first.”

“Why? Is it because all of the other girls you told about it ran away immediately?”

“No it’s because I just made it up—“

“Is it because it makes you sound like a pornographic Guy Fieri?”

“I do _not_ sound like motherfucking Guy Fieri!”

Laura bites her lip and raises her eyebrows at you.

“Really Carm? _You got a one-way ticket to Flavortown!_ ”

Her impression is atrocious, the put-on voice only slightly more offensive to your senses than the way she makes finger guns with her hands and pretends to shoot into the air repeatedly before blowing off her fingertips like they’re fucking smoking.

You squint at her and roll your eyes.

“Who’s sidetracking you from your orgasms now, Sweetheart?”

There’s a tense moment of silence, and you’re not sure if she’s going to back down and let you fuck her or continue with her antics.

“Point taken.”

She hikes her calf up onto your back and uses the foot that now rests against your ass to tug you down to her.

You fall willingly, crushing your lips to hers with a happy moan and pressing your knee against her harder.

She whines into your mouth, and you grin when she starts pushing your shoulders to try and guide your lips further down her body.

You lean to the right slightly, reaching out to the ‘nightstand’ to grab a hair-tie.

Laura doesn’t notice your movements until you sit back on your knees, too preoccupied with rocking her hips against your leg.

She frowns as you throw your hair into a messy bun on top of your head.

“What’s up? Don’t like my new ‘do?”

“Huh? Oh, no no you look adorable, I’m just… mourning the loss of a dream, I guess.”

“Creampuff, what the fuck are you talking about?”

She laughs.

“Well one of the first times I saw you, you were running your fingers through your hair as you cooked — which, sidenote, seems kind of unsanitary — but anyway, since then, picturing myself tugging on your hair while you tongue-fuck me has been a go-to fantasy from my spankbank.”

She says it so matter-of-factly that you blush, because in the last twenty minutes you somehow managed to forget how dirty she can be.

You involuntarily grind your clit against her thigh and she giggles in a way that’s way too innocent for the current situation.

“You can still grab my hair while I go down on you, you know, bun or no bun. Wanna call it a saddle-horn and ride my face like a cowboy?”

She laughs again, but it turns into a moan when the movement causes her folds to rub up and down your leg.

“That depends, will you talk to me like John Wayne?”

You grimace.

“What would that even sound like? _You tangle with me, I’ll have your hide. Now saddle up pardner, let me get a taste of that south-mouth.”_

“Carm, that was terrible. And where on earth did you learn the phrase south-mouth?!”

“At least I didn’t do finger guns, _which_ , in my case, would’ve actually made sense. And uh, I don’t know, the internet?”

“You just sounded like the little kid with the pink hat from The Fairly Odd Parents!”

You balk, quickly seeing where this is going.

“I draw the world’s hardest line at that one Cupcake. We’re gonna have to have a long talk about your horrible choice in roleplay characters at some point.”

Laura gives a deep belly laugh at that.

“Don’t worry Karnstein, I have literally zero interest in pursuing any of what’s been said in the past five minutes. Other than riding your face, but that can wait until your back is healed. I’m plenty happy with you and just you.”

You spend a minute just smiling at her stupidly. Then she bucks into your knee again and you remember where this was all going before you got so incredibly sidetracked. 

Without further ado you slink down her body, stopping briefly to lave your tongue over stiff, adorably pink nipples before trailing kisses down the line that goes from her sternum to her bellybutton. Her hands are in your hair already, betraying her earlier concern about the ‘loss of a dream.’

You’re nearly as impatient right now as she is, though, so you leave the majority of her upper body unmarked and delve straight between her thighs. You’ve got plenty of time to make up for the negligence later, after all.

One hand on the inside of each of Laura’s thighs, you spread her open as wide as her legs will allow. Then you dip your head and lick a broad stripe up the length of her cunt with a groan, the action pulling a gasp from her lungs.

“Mmm Cupcake, I always knew you’d be delicious.”

“C-Carm please don’t tease, I’m already so clos—fffuck!”

You can tell that she’s being honest, her clit is stiff and swollen and peaking out of its hood, like it’s absolutely begging to be taken into your mouth. Which you happily do.

It only takes a minute of suction and a few more swipes of your tongue over Laura’s clit for her thighs to tense up and shake, and then she’s spilling her first orgasm of the day against your lips and chin. The breathless cry she releases sends a shiver up your spine.

Pulling back slightly, cautious to avoid running your tongue across any oversensitive spots, you continue to lap at her. Licking through her labia, the only thoughts in your head are:

_If I got the occasional snack break, I could actually do this forever._

_I can’t believe she was doubting that I’d make her come, she was so wound up that she lost it after two fucking minutes!_

And,

_Guess I’ll just have to keep going, wouldn’t want to give her any reason to doubt me in the future._

Her fingers relax against your scalp, and you take it as a sign that she’s calmed down enough for round two.

You lower your head further, letting your tongue trace around her entrance leisurely and moaning at finally getting to taste her straight from the source. Releasing one of her thighs, you bring your freed hand to rest just above her mound, using your thumb to rub light circles that are equal parts soothing and teasing on the skin beneath her belly button.

Waiting until Laura begins to rock her hips gently against your mouth, you bring your thumb down to her hole to get it slick with her arousal and bring it back up to press lightly against the hood of her clit.

She moans, and the throaty, broken utterance of your name has you smiling against her immediately.

“Please Carm…”

You don’t make her elaborate, taking mercy on her for the time being. You’ll make her beg later, just as much as she made you, but that can wait until orgasm number three at least. You’re clearly not as much of a dick as she is, which you mentally pat yourself on the back for.

With a pleased hum, you slide your tongue inside of her. She immediately lets out a string of curses and pulls tighter at the roots of your hair, hips beginning to thrust more steadily against your face.

The way your thumb is pushing down on her hood lets your nose nudge against the bottom of her clit with each bob of your head, and you can feel her thighs start to shake again.

You ignore the ache in your jaw, continuing to swirl your tongue against her walls and humming when you feel them begin to flutter around you.

She comes with a shout, her back arching off your bed, and you allow yourself a smug smile because if she enjoyed that, then you’re about to make her see fucking stars.

You don’t pause your ministrations, refusing to let her come down gently this time. Instead you scoot your body a little higher and grab her legs, guiding her to spread them wide and bend them at the knees until she’s got her feet planted on the bed, completely open and at your mercy.

It takes a bit of stretching, but you manage to get a hand on one of her breasts, palming her nipple before rolling it softly between the knuckles on your middle and pointer fingers.

Laura’s hips jump at that, displacing your tongue from inside of her and managing to sloppily relocate it to her clit instead.

“Oh my fff—fuck!”

Working through the smile that her response draws, you begin to trace the ridges around her clit with your tongue. As soon as you feel her settling into a rhythm you change your approach, alternating between wide strokes of your tongue against the length of her and quick flicks over her clit, all with the occasional push of a finger inside of her.

You manage to keep up these rapidly changing rhythms for what feels like a solid ten minutes.

Not that you have a watch. Or a clock.

Regardless, you teased Laura until she’s absolutely disheveled, each of her breaths laced with a sob and her hips jerking erratically in her desperation for you to let her fucking come already.

With an evil smile, one that probably comes off less sinister than you’d like, seeing as you’re still basically moaning and groaning and attached lip-to-lower-lip (#southmouth) with the subject of your teasing, you decide that it’s time for a little bit of payback.

“What do you need, Laura? Hmm? You’re—“

She bucks her hips up unexpectedly and nearly breaks your nose, but you summon up the willpower and call upon the oxytocin still lingering in your system from your orgasm to mask the pain and continue on. You ignore how you sound slightly more nasally than you did a minute ago.

“—You’re squirming an awful lot for someone who’s already come twice and doubted that she’d even come at all, are you trying to come again, or…?”

You wrap your lips around her clit once more as you wait for her to muster the brainpower to form actual words.

“FUCK Carm! Please-fu— stop-“

You’re pulling away from her and settling onto your haunches the second you hear her say ‘stop.’

“NO—nonononono, not _stop_ , stop being a d-douchebag and just fucking fuck me already! Carm, please!”

Oh.

Alright.

You can totally do that.

In a blink you’ve got two fingers pistoning into Laura, and you wait to hear her cry out happily before sliding your tongue back up to her clit.

She screams, then. Not some shrill, high-pitched thing, but a noise that builds from her chest and demands the world right then and there, and it’s so unmistakably _Laura_ in its brash, unashamed, _fucking_ _delectable_ nature that it leaves you whimpering in response.

Her body is taut and pulled into a painful looking arch, the only points of contact between her flesh and the bed being the soles of her feet, her shoulder blades, and the back of her head. And speaking of backs of heads, she’s currently got yours in a death grip, holding you still so she can rut against your face.

She’s tight to the point that you can’t actually thrust into her anymore, so you let her frantic bucking motions do the job for you. You’re left grinding against the mattress when you feel the hot-cold-hot-cold temperature changes on your fingers, the ones that indicates just how successful she’s been at taking what she wants and fucking herself against you.

You just let her continue what she’s doing.

Getting herself off by controlling you. Using you as a glorified finger-shaped dildo and whatever the reverse-equivalent of a Fleshlight is.

And damn, you’ve never been into this kind of shit in any of your prior escapades. What would this even make you? The bottom, or like, the top-bottom? Sub-top? Pseudo-top?

Pushing those thoughts away in favor of enjoying the here and now, you’re suddenly brought back to the present. You’re still laying between Laura’s bent legs, with your mouth opened wide and your tongue flattened and firm so she can grind against it. Breathing is a little difficult, partially because you’re in awe of the little human that’s currently fucking herself against your face, and partially because she’s got you pressed so hard against her that there’s really no space for you to try and catch a breath.

It’s cool.

Asphyxiation-by-cunnilingus would actually look pretty sick on a tombstone.

Laura’s sobbing out her pleasure again and you know that she’s about thirty seconds away from coming explosively. You can tell because she’s _tight._ Not just the standard vagina-level of tight, but like, tight-tight. For a moment you genuinely fear for the safety of your fingers.

You figure that ‘I made her come so hard that she broke my fingers’ would make a great footnote on your cunnilingus-themed tombstone though, so you squeeze a third digit inside of her and crook them up against her g-spot until she freezes and goes silent.

Cracking open one eye, all you can see is the trembling expanse of her lower stomach and the vague hints of her nipples where her breasts are slightly visible past the arch of her body. She hardly makes a noise, verbally at least.

The slapping of her hands against your sheets is sort of loud, but that’s probably due to your current position and not at all audible to any of your neighbors.

Neighbors.

That you just remembered exist.

You hope they don’t file a noise complaint.

You’ll worry about that later though. Laura’s body — limp, sweaty, and spent — drops unceremoniously back down on the mattress.

Taking the brief moment of stillness as a reprieve for your sore body and aching lungs, you drag yourself higher up the bed until you can collapse on top of Laura, your cheek resting against the top of her right breast. Your current level of fatigue makes you think that you should maybe look into getting a gym membership, but if this thing between you and Laura is going to become a regular occurrence (which you hope to fucking god it will,) then you figure that you’ll be getting all of the workout you need.

Your heart finally settles into a less I’m-gonna-beat-out-of-your-chest-and-it’s-gonna-be-gruesome style rhythm, so you peer up at Laura. From where your ear is currently resting against her, the still frantic beating of her own heart makes you smile smugly. _That_ , and the fact that it’s been like two minutes since she came and she hasn’t shown any signs of returning to the land of the living.

Just as you’re about to start panicking that _oh god you fucking killed her,_ she lets out a raspy, shiver-inducing chuckle.

“H-holy fuck, Carm, I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Do you have any ‘Carmilla Karnstein brought me to Come-So-Hard-You-Black-Out-And-Ruin-My-Sheets City and all I got was several mind-blowing orgasms’ shirts, by chance? Because I’ll take ten.”

You burst out laughing, and a sudden surge of affection for this girl hits you like a train and has you scrambling the rest of the way up her body until you can press your lips to hers. Laura moans when you push your tongue into her mouth, and you’re so wound up from fucking her that your first response is to straddle her thigh, grind your pussy against her, and start moving your fingers again.

You tap a gentle beat across her cunt, letting your middle finger stray slightly to toy with her clit, but she stops you with a shaky hand clasped around your wrist.

“Oh shiiiiit— fuck! Whoa there L-ladykiller, I’m gonna need a cookie break and at least ten minutes of cuddling before I’m ready to go again.”

You pull your hand back up, sucking Laura’s wetness off of your fingers with a smile.

“Fine by me, Cupcake, I can be patient.”

You ignore her when she breathes out a smug ‘that wasn’t the case when you were begging me to let you come an hour ago…’

***

It’s 3PM when you’re both finally sated, another four orgasms had between the two of you, and you’re drifting into a well earned blackout when you feel Laura begin to get out of bed.

“Mmmnoo stop…don’t leave?”

She pauses, perched on the edge of your mattress, so you tug her back against your chest. She settles back against you with a satisfied hum.

“If you insist, I _guess_ I can stay for a few more hours…”

Laura pulls your comforter back up until your naked bodies are covered, and the last thing you feel before you finally succumb to sleep is her lips pressing a quick kiss against your forehead.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final installation of 'Yours' is here, sorry it took so long!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright this is a monster of a chapter, I apologize. I wanted to keep it around 10k words, but then I hit that mark and hadn't even gotten to the sex yet. So here are 15k words of what might be pure garbage, I don't know and I really don't want to read it over again! Leave a comment if you think the ending was too abrupt because I'm kinda on the fence about that, but also please be gentle because I'm very fragile. xoxogossipdyke

Very little changes over the next two months; you and Laura still text and write notes, and you still fail spectacularly at cooking simple dishes while managing to put yourself in seemingly constant physical danger. The only difference between now and two months ago is that all of these interactions have taken a drastic turn towards the X-rated.

For example, today you found yourself comparing the most recent note Laura left you with one she’d left nine or ten weeks earlier. 

(Yes, you started saving the notes again.

And maybe, just maybe, you recovered all of the notes that you’d vowed to throw out following The Cafe Incident. 

 _And_ it’s a distinct possibility that you have a drawer in your kitchen full of slightly chewed up notes that you salvaged from your ill-fated attempt at destruction-by-garbage disposal.

You still need to get that fixed… )

Regardless, rereading Laura’s old notes alongside the _very_ descriptive and colorful notes you’ve received this week points to a dramatic shift in the dynamics of your relationship.

Exhibit 1A: (Received two days prior to The Cafe Incident)

 **“Hey Carm! Just wanted to let you know that I _totally_ saw you picking cheetos out of your cleavage. With chopsticks. ** **Again** **. Have you considered wearing a cone? Like the kind that animals wear after they have surgery? My childhood cat (RIP Trisha) had to wear a cone after she got spayed and the whole time she had it on she could only walk backwards. I’m not sure if that’d happen to you too, but still. Consider it. It’d be like the 10 point ring of a Skee Ball machine, you know? Like, you’re clearly not winning anything anytime soon, but at least you didn’t throw the ball through a window? In your case ‘ball’ would be replaced by ‘orange corn-based snack’ and ‘window’ would be ‘cleavage.’ Obviously.”**

Exhibit 1B: (Received two days prior to The Cafe Incident and two minutes after Exhibit 1A)

**“Okay I thought about my proposal a little bit more and changed my mind. If you wore a cone in an effort to stop dropping all of your stupid food into your stupid bra, then every time you ate and somehow manage to completely miss your mouth (which I’ve deduced is more often than not) you’d wind up with that food trapped around your neck. In some cases that wouldn’t be so bad, for example: plain pasta, spinach leaves, gummy bears. A little wet maybe, potentially a little sticky, but all in all it’s manageable. _However,_ I’ve rarely seen you eat any of the foods on the ‘ _safe for consumption in cone’_ list that I just finished developing. Imagine eating a bag of cheetos while you’ve got your snazzy new cone on, right? Only one word comes to mind at _that_ scenario.” **

Exhibit 1C: (Received two days prior to The Cafe Incident and one minute after Exhibit 1B)

 **“And I _know_ , I know what you’re thinking, _‘Oh Laura, you beautiful benevolent genius, never doubt thyself! Your cone idea is as watertight as it is brilliant! Please, reveal thy secrets, what_** **_is_ ** **_this singular word of which you speak?’_ To answer your inexplicably Shakespearean-sounding question, it’s actually _two_ words! The first word would be ‘hilarious,’ because c’mon, I’ve _seen_ how you eat and the tip-the-bag-upside-down-above-the-assumed-location-of-your-mouth approach is something I’d literally buy tickets to see. The second word would be ‘disastrous.’ Seriously, imagine dozens of pointy little ‘doodles scratching at your neck and leaving copious trails of bright orange cheeto dust. You’d look like you’re wearing some kind of avant-garde choker once you took the cone off, and I doubt even you could rock that look. So yeah. Boom! I rest my case. Also oh my god I’m so late for work shitshitshit bye Carm!!!” **

Exhibit 2A: (Received yesterday)

 **“Hey Carm! Just wanted to let you know that I got a noise complaint from my neighbor yesterday.** **Again** **. Have you considered a ball gag? I’m not personally into the aesthetic, but I think listening to you moan around it would be pretty hot. I think there’s usually a lot of drool involved, though. We should make a pros and cons list! I’ll start!**

**Pros: In a year or so I could maybe look my neighbors in the eyes again.**

**Cons: I do _so_ enjoy hearing you shouting my name.**

**Pros: You won’t be able to go off on snarky little tangents that delay me _(and_** **_you_ ** **_, lest we forget the 47-Minute Denial Extravaganza…)_ from getting laid. **

**Cons: The drool. Would it get in your hair? Would it get in _my_ hair? Am I willing to try it and find out? Are _you?”_ **

Exhibit 2B: (Received roughly five minutes after Exhibit 2A)

**“Alright after a lot of really serious thought and a bit of soul-searching, I’ve reached a consensus. No ball gag. I’m worried that you would look like a cross between a seal balancing a ball on its face and a moron trying to swallow a jawbreaker. While I’m sure you’d make an adorable seal/moron, I’m just not able to reconcile with the fact that I’d inevitably wind up thinking about aquariums while my fingers are inside you. Also, thanks to last week’s strap-on debacle, you now know that I’m really bad at putting on things with lots of tricky buckles, especially when I’m all flustered and excited (which I _always_ am when you’re nearby and in any state of undress) so I feel like just getting the gag onto you in the first place would be a massively annoying and unsexy process. So yeah, in conclusion, there will be no wearing of ball gags. _”_ **

Exhibit 2C: (Received like 45 seconds after Exhibit 2B)

**“Still though, we need to figure out a way to keep you quiet when I’m fucking you. The rest of the people in my building are literally ignoring me at this point, including the older deaf woman down the hall which is honestly sort of confusing? I’m thinking that our best bet would probably be to just gag you with your own panties. Thoughts? _”_ **

Clearly, Laura’s still definitively an absolute fucking nerd with a startlingly uniform note-writing format, but now you get to enjoy the filthy side of her as well. You’re still kind of reeling over the fact that she owned a cat named Trisha though, even if she insists that it was her dad’s idea and she had no influence in the naming process.

Her texts have gotten explicit, too.

She used to send you selfies of her at work, usually of her rolling her eyes or face down in a pile of notes and transcripts, with a caption of ‘Why do I go to work again? Paying my bills can’t be _that_ important.’

She still sends you shit like that, of course. But now those texts are interspersed with casual nudes, with captions like ‘Did you know I had a freckle here? Me neither!’. Your favorites though, are the _less_ _casual_ nudes that she sends.

There’s a special place in your heart that gets all fluttery when you think about the one mirror-selfie she sent you, where she’s got an eye squinted shut and she’s soaking wet and flushed from her cheeks to her chest, captioned “Just had to fuck myself in the shower because I couldn’t stop thinking about your magnificent hoo-ha. Got shampoo in my eye though, it stings!” followed by a string of salsa dancer and ghost emojis.

You’re still not quite sure what the fuck that was supposed to mean…

The other thing that’s changed about the way you two interact is that you spend every free moment you can find fucking each other. The moments don’t even need to be _free,_ necessarily, which, yeah, you’re enjoying, but also, that shit gets dangerous sometimes.

You glance down to the bandage on your forearm and recall a particularly fond memory of making grilled cheese last week.

This cooking adventure just so happened to be occurring a scant few minutes after receiving Laura’s aforementioned post-shower-mirror-selfie, and you should’ve known better, honestly, but when the fuck have you ever been anything other than self-sabotaging?

There you were, cooking away and making a valiant effort to not squirm around in the loose boxers you’d thrown on after work in lieu of legitimate pants, when there was a single knock at your door followed by a gust of icy wind as Laura let herself into your apartment.

You’d greeted her with a forced nonchalance, muttering out ‘How’s your eye, Cupcake?’

And then the whole bullshit nonchalant act was blown to hell because Laura proceeded to drop to her knees in front of you, yanking down your boxers along the way. When she’d pressed her face into your crotch and immediately began to lick, you’d more or less forgotten your surroundings.

As you’ve been known to do.

 _Fortunately_ , you’d remembered to turn off the stove and push the frying pan far far away from you as soon as Laura got on her knees, so you _did_ manage to avoid a repeat of the Flaming Potato Disaster.

 _Unfortunately_ , your hands and arms tend to get a little grabby and flail-y when you’re being tongue-fucked into the 12th dimension, and the stovetop hadn’t exactly cooled down yet.

And you got a very visceral reminder of that little fact when Laura did the swirly thing with her tongue that always makes your body jackknife in on itself.

Apparently, slamming your forearms down onto a hot stovetop —and leaving them there for a solid ten seconds before registering the pain because your brain was like pudding at that point — tends to result in really fucking painful burns across said forearms.

Honestly though, that orgasm was totally worth it.

 _Laura_ was worth it, _is_ worth it, full-stop.

 

* * *

 

Another month passes and the two of you have yet to _Define The Relationship,_ which is a phrase you recently discovered during some intense Googling on how to act like an adult. That phrase was basically all you found though, which was a letdown because honestly, you were kinda hoping you’d stumble upon some magical list, custom tailored to fit your exact situation, that explained exactly how to move forward with Laura.

You haven’t had a ‘girlfriend’ since you were nineteen, and you haven’t really wanted one since then either, your hell-bitch of an ex kind of put you off the whole dating thing. Of course there were girls that you _fucked_ — you’re not made of stone, after all — but that was usually the extent of it.

Singular flings and one-night stands.

Barring the time you accidentally fucked a girl twice in one week without realizing that she was, in fact, _the same girl_ (you thought she might have been Monday Night’s twin that got elaborate matching tattoos,) you’ve been great at following your own rule to never let a hookup become a two-time deal.

You’ve pretty much convinced yourself that a few hours of boning is all you’re good for, anyway, and it’s not like girls ever throw themselves at you with the intention of forming a committed relationship.

So you have hookups.

It’s simple.

Impersonal.

Mess-free.

 

What you’ve got with Laura is none of those things.

It scared the shit out of you when you realized you don’t mind that.

Regardless, there’s been no _D_ -ing of the _R_ , as the youth might say. You spend a lot of your free time stressing about that… or whatever free time is left over after bouts of having sex with Laura and even longer bouts of _thinking_ about having sex with Laura, at least.

 

And you’ve got so many fucking questions, too.

Are you two dating?

Exclusive?

Girlfriends?

Does Laura even like that term?

Would she prefer _freedom partner_ or something else that’s equally trite?

Have you been metaphorically castrated by this maybe-a-relationship?

Do you really care that you totally fucking have? 

What the fuck is the deal with Danny?

 

You spend a lot of energy trying _not_ to think about that last one, because try as you might, you still haven’t been able to shake the memories of The Cafe Incident and the way you felt afterwards.

The thing is, all of the whirring in your brain comes to a complete stop when you’re actually _with_ Laura. You’re not sure how she does it, but the second you’re in her presence it’s like your mind prances out of the room labeled ‘ _Bullshit Tornado Shitstorm,_ ’ skips happily down your brain-hallway, and pauses for a quick fist pump before heel-clicking into the _’I Don’t Give A Fuck About Anything Other Than Laura’s Tits And Laura’s Voice And Laura’s Smile’_ room.

It’s a working title, obviously.

Jolly as that all is, it’s definitely starting to become a problem.

Because at this point, you’re so far past the ‘Last Chance To Exit’ sign that it’s not even funny, and you’re well on your way to the stage where one might start throwing around a label that starts with an ‘L’ and is four letters long.

And that label isn’t _like_ or _lame_ or _lick_. Even if, once upon a time, the first choice was sufficient, and ignoring how you _are_ the walking definition of the second choice, and have been spending a considerable amount of time practicing the third choice on Laura’s erogenous zones.

The fact of the matter is that you’ve come down with a massive goddamn case of The Feels. Irreversible and incurable.

How the fuck are you supposed to follow Google’s (lackluster) advice of maturely discussing your feelings and _DTR-_ ing when you can hardly form a coherent thought — let alone a meaningful _sentence_ — around Laura? Add that to the fact that you have virtually no experience or knowledge of the inner workings of a healthy adult relationship, you’ve got a recipe for heartbreak and utter failure that even _you_ couldn’t fuck up.

For all intents and purposes, you’d say that you guys _act_ like a couple. (The spineless part of your brain suggests that you settle for acting couple-ish and continuing on in this current uncertainty-limbo-hellscape until the end of time, because Some Laura is better than No Laura.) You’re trying to grow a backbone for once in your life though, and a legitimate one at that — acting like a callous bitch comes naturally to you, you’re a fucking Karnstein, but fighting to keep something good in your life is more foreign to you than the concept of _not_ having a private plane is to Mattie.

And honestly, even with all of your fucked up little insecurities and personal flaws, you know you’d have to be fucking blind to observe interactions between yourself and Laura and _not_ see something way deeper than casual friendship with an agreed upon mutual exchange of mind-blowing orgasms on the side.

Laura leaves shit around your apartment all the time and you do the same, even though sometimes it’s just out of spite and a petty urge to make her place as messy as yours.

You’ve kissed in public. Not that you’ve gone on ‘dates’ or anything, but on the rare occasion that you’re leaving somewhere as she’s coming in, or vice versa, you’ll both say hi and flirt for a few minutes (or until someone else that’s trying to go through the doorway clears their throat,) and then you’ll part with a kiss. On the fucking _mouth_ , thank you very much. That cheek bullshit is a thing of the past.

You two even went out and bought a motherfucking sex toy, for god’s sake.

Like, _REALLY._

You think that on a list of How to Have a Gay-Lady Relationship, _‘Purchase A Strap-On Together’_ is only a step before _‘Adopt A Cat Together And Name It Melissa Etheridge,’_ and only a handful of steps before _‘Let Melissa Etheridge Sit In The Middle Seat Of The Uhaul While You And Your Gal Pal Move Your Belongings Into Your Quaint Recently Purchased Cottage In The Suburbs.’_

Are there even cottages in the suburbs? Where _do_ cottages exist? Will you and Laura have to move to the woods with your nonexistent lesbian country-singing cat?

Who the fuck knows?!

Not you, and _that’s_ the problem!

You can’t expect to get answers about your eventual status as a Cat Mother if you can’t even figure out whether or not your potential future Cat Co-Mother is interested in mothering a fucking cat in the first place.

 

You feel like you’re going insane.

 

* * *

 

You think that Laura’s actually been on the verge of initiating The Talk™ a few times in the past month, but someone or something has interrupted her every time. You’re not sure if you should be relieved that you’ve managed to continuously dodge DTR-ing, or worried that The Powers That Be are somehow intervening and preventing The Talk™ from happening because they know that if it does then everything will go to shit.

The first time Laura sorta-kinda-maybe started to bring the topic up was just a few days after you two started sleeping together.

 

You were both crammed in your obnoxiously tiny shower, attempting to rinse off the layers of sweat and cum that’d built up on your skin from the absolutely _raunchy_ rounds of fucking that’d just taken place. You’d just finished helping Laura wash the shampoo out of her hair and had spun around so she could scrub your back when it happened. She’d paused her mindless commentary on the smoothness of your skin mid-sentence and placed a weirdly serious kiss on your shoulder. You still can remember the feeling of her hands shaking slightly when she placed them on your hips and the nervous lilt to her voice when she said ‘Hey Carm?’

Laura had just about managed to get the words “What are we-” out of her mouth before the water spraying down above you made an abrupt switch from ‘pleasantly steamy’ to ‘if it got any colder it would be snow.’

Naturally, her sentence was cut short and replaced by the undignified distress-squawks of two suddenly freezing lesbians.

Her train of thought was clearly lost in the frantic scramble to exit the shower, and when you were both free from its icy clutches you made no attempt to ask Laura to continue what she had been saying. Instead, you zeroed in on her nipples, which had dutifully sprung to attention from the ice bath they’d just received. Deciding to take the coward’s way out of what had the potential to be a _wildly_ uncomfortable conversation, you’d bent Laura over the bathroom sink and fucked her brains out instead.

 

The second time you two were handed the opportunity to put a label on your relationship concluded with an ending that was far less satisfying than the first time.

 

A month ago, you’d been granted a blessed night off from work. Having free time during the hours where humans generally functioned normally and enjoyed interacting in public gave you the wise idea to attempt to do something _normal_ with Laura, something that didn’t involve 3AM culinary disasters, 4AM flirting, or 5AM frenzied fucking.

Thanks to that bright idea, you’d found yourself back at your absolute least favorite cafe with one Laura Hollis smiling at you across the table. You’d both ordered hot chocolates, which Laura insisted on paying for, and fell into easy conversation about something inane and ridiculous. Based on the occasion where you two had made cupcakes and Laura got absolutely covered in icing, you should’ve expected that she would’ve figured out some way to make a mess again.

Laura managed to take five whole sips of her drink before she wound up with whipped cream on the tip of her nose, and the sight was just so fucking cute that you couldn’t help yourself.

You’d leaned in and swiped down the bridge of her nose with your thumb, slowly licked your thumb clean (because you’re a goddamn tease,) and then brought your hand down to cover Laura’s that was resting on the table.

The shy little smile she’d given you after that move had left you feeling like someone put your stomach in a blender. In a good way.

A minute later though, when one of the cafe servers came up to your table to ask if either of you wanted a refill, it had all gone to shit.

The server had commented on you two, said something along the lines of ‘You guys are a really cute couple’ before walking off to another table.

You hadn’t said anything, just smiled in a way that clearly stated you weren’t interested in making conversation. Laura, on the other hand, froze for a solid thirty seconds before starting to hastily explain just how not-a-couple you two were to the server’s retreating form.

And then Laura’s phone buzzed with an incoming text message that she apparently read with super speed, because she had stood up and thrown you a pained smile before saying “Work emergency, gotta run!” and heading for the door. You’d watched her walk away from you, whipping out her phone again and pressing it to her ear. The last thing you had heard her say before she was out the door was Danny’s name.

You don’t know what the fuck is wrong with that demonic cafe or why things seemed to go sideways every time you visited it, but you sure as hell wouldn’t mind if the whole place mysteriously went up in flames in the middle of the night.

 

The most recent time where it felt like you two were on the verge of DTR-ing was only a few days ago.

 

You and Laura had tumbled into her bed one afternoon on a rare day where you’d woken up before 5PM and she’d gotten home from work before 4PM. Feeling particularly horny, you’d made some stupid quip about needing Laura to hurry the fuck up and make you come. She’d taken the comment as a challenge to do the exact opposite, because of fucking course she would, and decided that right then and there was the perfect time to see how long she could go down on you without letting you get off.

In an event that would later be named The 47-Minute Denial Extravaganza Because Carmilla Is A Douchebag And Should Know Better Than To Challenge Laura, which was quickly shortened to just The 47-Minute Denial Extravaganza, Laura had stayed true to her word and ate you out for nearly an hour before allowing you to orgasm.

(You knew it lasted for exactly 47 minutes and 38 seconds because there was a stopwatch involved. Yes, Laura owns a fucking stopwatch. Apparently she moonlights as a high school gym coach when she’s not busy laminating post-it notes for her imaginary class of unappreciative 3rd graders.)

The thing about that whole experience, though, was that it felt like so much _more._ Even though the act itself was, truthfully, borderline pornographic, it felt like you two were _making love,_ not just fucking.

(You almost retched the first time that phrase appeared in your thoughts.)

Throughout the entire 47 fucking minutes, Laura had murmured things like _‘I’m so fucking lucky I get to touch you’_ and _‘You’re so beautiful holy shit’_ and _‘God I love making you feel good, baby’_ against your sweat-slicked skin. The way she had touched you was reverent, she’d touched you like she’d never done it before and would never get the chance to do it again. The playfulness that she’d started with tapered out into something way fucking deeper around minute four (which again, you would know, because _stopwatch,_ ) and by the end of it you were hoarse and trembling and failing miserably at holding back tears.

After you had come, Laura had moved so ( _so so so_ ) gently up your body. She had brushed away your tears with a watery laugh and pressed what had to have been the world’s softest kiss to your lips. When she broke the kiss she immediately lowered her body until she was draped across you completely, breaking the contact only for a moment to reach down and yank the blankets that’d been kicked to the foot of her bed over your rapidly cooling bodies.

She’d left a trail of kisses across your cheeks, over your jaw, and down your throat before settling comfortably, face burrowed into the hollow between your collarbone and neck, and limbs wrapped around yours like some lesbian boa-constrictor with the singular goal of snuggling its prey to death.

Then, in a tone of voice that you could only describe as utterly content, she’d said “There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now. Or... _ever_ , really.”

She’s said that same phrase, minus the last three words, a handful of times before. However, it’s only ever happened while she was actively fucking you, or being fucked by you, and it’s _never_ been said while she’s in an emotionally-charged, postcoital state.

You swear it took at least a full minute to breathe after you’d heard those words, and thankfully Laura more or less passed out after them because once you started breathing again those overwhelmed tears came back full force.

 

The realization of _‘Holy shit, I’m actually_ ** _in_** **_love_** _’_ hit you like several garbage bags full of hammers getting dumped from a skyscraper directly onto your chest. Felt pretty similar, too.

 

* * *

 

It took a few drunken days of recovery before you could stomach the fact that you are, in fact, very much head over heels in love with the inexplicably ridiculous yet mouthwateringly delectable Laura Hollis.

You’re stirring pasta around a pot full of boiling water when you suddenly feel like you’ve actually come to terms with the situation, and just like that, you realize that you need to make shit official.

You feel like you need to call someone and tell them the news, but your only friend in this whole fucking state is your neighbor, aka the person you happen to be in love with, so that’s kind of a moot option. After all, you literally _just_ came to terms with the notion that you need to tell Laura how you feel, and not a single part of your brain is willing to encourage you to call her up at 4AM and declare your undying love for her.

You’re kind of friendly with your neurotic ginger manager, and for a second you seriously contemplate calling her, but a voice inside your head that sounds alarmingly similar to Mattie says ‘Pshaw! How utterly unprofessional, Darling.’

Then it hits you.

_Mattie._

She’s the kind of no-nonsense-fuck-your-bullshit-because-frankly-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn voice of reason that you need right now. Plus, you know that she’ll almost definitely be awake, probably preparing for some circle-jerk of an overseas conference call.

With a few more seconds of hesitation and a halfhearted stir of your now overcooked pasta, you unlock your phone, pull up Mattie’s contact, and hit ‘call.’ She answers on the third ring.

“Mon Cherie, if you’re about to ask me to bail you out of jail I swear on your ludicrous pleather pants that I will annihilate everything and everyone you hold dear—“

“Well hello to you too, Mattie, yeah I’m doing great, of course, I miss you too sis!”

You hear her scoff into her cell’s microphone,

“Hmm, the reception is too clear for you to be calling from jail… So, an impromptu 2AM phone call from my darling little sister, to what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“It’s 4AM for me, actually, not that that makes a difference…”

You pause then, suddenly drained of the frantic energy that drove you to make this fucking call in the first place.

“You’re stalling, Kitty Cat, spit it out. Are you _sure_ you’re not in jail? Are you being held hostage? Say ‘Savonnerie’ if you’re in danger—“

“Mattie! I’m not in jail or being held hostage and I’m sure as fuck not about to start attempting to pronounce whatever ridiculously expensive brand you’re telling me to say, I-I…” you take a deep breath and turn off your stovetop, this isn’t a moment for multitasking and you really can’t deal with another kitchen fire right now. “I’m in love.”

You flinch at the noise you get in response, it sounded like a phone being dropped to the ground. A few seconds of fumbling-noises later, Mattie’s back.

“Sorry Darling, I dropped my phone. You’re lucky that the Savonnerie is so plush, because this garbage device would have cracked into pieces otherwise,”

You spare a quick second to stare off into the middle distance, satisfied with finally figuring out what the actual fuck a Savonnerie is whilst attempting to figure out why Mattie insists on saying that instead of the word ‘carpet.’ 

“But please, would you repeat that? I believe I just heard my baby sister, the poster child for the phrase ‘never finger and linger,’ say that she’s _in love?!”_

“Wha-pff-Y’know—“ you sputter unintelligibly, _“First of all_ , literally nobody says ‘never finger and linger,’ so please stop that immediately. And secondly… fuck it. You heard right. I’m in love and it’s terrifying but amazing and I feel like I’m constantly about to shit my pants but _god,_ the _orgasms!”_

Mattie makes a gagging noise, somehow managing to do it in a way that also sounds vaguely fond.

“Sweetheart, please. _Please_ refrain from _ever_ using the word ‘orgasm’ in my presence. I’m a lady,”

You interject with a quickly muttered “So am I and so is the person giving me orgasms,” before Mattie continues, barreling on like you hadn’t said anything at all.

“However, I need more. Who is she? What’s her name? What does she do? What does she look like? Does she treat you well? Has she ever—“

“Holy shit, Mattie, one question at a time please!”

“One moment, Carmilla.”

“Uh, okay?”

You pace around your kitchen with your phone pressed to your ear, listening to the rapid-fire typing noises coming from Mattie’s end. The sound lulls you into a sense of calm, and you’re leaning against your countertop when the return of Mattie’s voice shocks you back into awareness.

“Alright Kitten, ignore my previous questions and clear your schedule for this weekend. I’m going to be flying in to see you and meet this mystery girl on Saturday. I’ll email you the details. I’ve got a conference call in five though, so ta, Darling!”

You’re only halfway through the word ‘goodbye’ when Mattie hangs up on you.

Rolling your eyes at your sister’s typical bad-bitch-literally-every-situation-must-be-a-power-play behavior, you fire off a short text to Laura.

**_Carmilla: Hey Cupcake, can you make sure that you’re home on Saturday night, around 8PM?_ **

 

* * *

 

Mattie arrives in Minneapolis in her usual fashion that Saturday evening; i.e. she caused a huge fucking commotion by flying in on her private plane and nearly fainted when you called for an Uber to bring you two back to your apartment from the airport. She’d demanded that you call one of the stupidly expensive Premium Black cars, attempting to justify said demand by reasoning that her outfit cost three times what you pay for rent, and she ‘simply wouldn’t tolerate risking its cleanliness by sitting in the back of a car that could’ve just contained sloppy inebriated twenty-somethings.’

You didn’t bother to point out that _you’ve_ been the sloppy inebriated twenty-something on more than one occasion.

She was, naturally, somewhat disappointed with the state of your humble abode, not that you really gave a shit, but her hemming and hawing was actually starting to give you a headache.

So you cracked open a bottle of red, knowing that Drunk Mattie tends to be nicer than Sober Mattie, and poured two massive glasses.

By 7:30 you’re both pleasantly tipsy and chatting comfortably, but as the minutes tick by and it starts getting closer to the time you’d asked Laura to be around you begin to feel your nerves growing.

Mattie notices, and immediately points it out with her standard level of tact.

“Darling, are you alright? This wine might be dollar store swill but I’m certain that it isn’t laced with stimulants, and frankly dear, you’re twitching enough to be mistaken as a seasoned tweaker.”

You sigh, ignoring how strange it is to hear the word ‘tweaker’ come out of Mattie’s mouth. She must be watching shitty cop shows again.

“I’m _fine_ Mattie, just, a little anxious, or whatever.”

“Nervous about introducing me to your lady-friend, Kitty Cat? Afraid she might like me more than she likes you?”

You scoff at Mattie’s sly grin and take another gulp of wine.

“Not a fucking chance, I wear leather like a boss and I’m dynamite in the sack, so clearly I’m a catch.”

Mattie’s expression sours, then softens.

“While I’d like to avoid thinking about your second defining quality, I will agree that you somehow manage to pull off leather quite well. You’re a catch indeed, Darling. And any girl that doesn’t recognize that is undoubtedly an idiot.”

You try to hide the little pleased smile her words cause, turning around to refill your glasses again.

“I know just the thing that’ll help you burn off some of your nervous energy, ‘Milla, dancing!”

You roll your eyes for the millionth time that night, but counter it with a shrug.

“Eh, why the fuck not?”

“That’s the spirit, Sis. Now come, you _do_ remember how to waltz, yes?”

“As if I could _ever_ forget the bullshit dance classes Maman forced us into.”

Mattie laughed and gave you a face that said ‘fair point’ before extending her hand, which you took with a playful groan.

Twenty minutes of drinking and dancing later, you feel your phone chime out Laura’s specific text tone from your pocket. Looking around your kitchen as you and Mattie continue to twirl each other around like idiots, you notice that the walls look brighter than they did a few minutes ago, which could only mean that Laura’s home and had turned on the lights in her kitchen.

“Was that your lady-friend? When _am_ I going to meet her, anyway?”

“Mattie, can you stop saying lady-friend? It sounds ridiculous,”

You pause mid-sentence as Mattie spins you again, continuing to talk only once you feel like you’re not about to be spun through the wall by your overzealous and out of practice dance partner. Then you feel eyes on your back and figure that now is as good a time as any to bite the bullet.

“And to answer your question, _yes,_ that was Laura, and you’ll meet her in a minute,”

You point blindly in the direction of the kitchen window behind you.

“Because that’s her.”

Mattie cranes her neck to look into Laura’s window for a moment before separating the two of you. With your back still facing the window, she places her hands on your shoulders in a comforting gesture and gives you a pitiful look.

“Oh Darling, I’m _so_ sorry…”

“What’re you talking about—“

Spinning around, you take in the view of Laura’s apartment. Your grip loosens at what you see and your empty wineglass crashes to the floor.

 

There’s Laura, _your_ Laura, chest to chest with her arms slung affectionately around the shoulders of some obnoxiously tall ginger woman. You scan the rest of her apartment, immediately noticing the same jacket and enormous pair of clown shoes tucked away in Laura’s hallway that you saw the night of The Cafe Incident, when Laura had rushed off to meet with _Danny._

You glance back at the two of them in the kitchen just in time to see Laura throw her head back with laughter and trace a finger down Danny’s jaw. When that finger continues down her neck and snags playfully in the collar of her shirt, something inside you breaks.

All at once, your stomach feels like it’s in a blender again.

In a bad way.

In the _worst_ way.

Unable to hold back your tears and feeling like a prom queen shoo-in having her title usurped at a high school dance, you slap your hand over your mouth and dart to your room, hoping to hold back the shoulder-shaking sobs that are already wracking your body.

You lower yourself down to your mattress slowly, lacking the energy to fling your body down and perform some physical spectacle of the bullshit emotional hell that you’re feeling. Curling into a ball and letting your already sort of gross pillow absorb the majority of your tears, you almost don’t notice it when Mattie lumbers in (a verb you’ve _never_ associated with your older sister,) and starts muttering about ‘giving that two-timing shitbag harlot a piece of her mind and also a swift punch to the throat.’

In that moment, the appreciation of your likeness to Mattie is the only decent emotion you’re experiencing.

Everything else feels like some all-consuming mixture of rage, betrayal, and heartbreak.

You’re suddenly filled with a burst of energy, and not the healthy, productive kind. It’s more of that fiery-anger-of-1,000-exploding-suns type of energy.

Picking up your phone with shaky hands, you open the message thread between Laura and yourself. You want to vomit when you spot her last text, “running a little late, another last minute work emergency of course! Can’t wait to see you though!!!” followed by an array of heart and bumblebee emojis.

You text her.

 

**_Carmilla: What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Laura?_ **

 

Surprisingly enough, her response is immediate.

 

_Laura: Are you seriously asking ME that, Carmilla? Fuck you. Do us both a favor and lose my number._

 

You have no fucking idea what that’s supposed to mean, and another wall of hurt slams into you as the vicious tone of Laura’s reply sinks in.

It’s fucked. Everything’s fucked.

 _This_ is why you don’t do relationships, because they give you false hope that maybe you’ll finally be able to be happy and then they shatter into a million fucking pieces that you’re entirely incapable of cleaning up.

Mattie leaves the room.

You throw your phone against the wall.

Might as well shatter that, too.

Your sister returns after some time, carrying another bottle of wine and two sets of pajamas that you’ve never seen before.

“Have a drink and sleep it off, Darling, we’ll figure it out in the morning.”

 

* * *

 

You wake up and rub your eyes, hissing at the sunlight that’s dared to invade your bedroom. You’re curled up and laying on your side, about an inch away from hanging off the edge of the bed, and you’re about to shuffle back to the relative safety of the middle of your mattress when you feel movement beside you.

That brings a wide smile to your face, because you fucking love waking up to Laura sleeping next to you.

Rolling over with naught but a groan and a poorly-formed attack plan to sneak in a few cuddles, you’re met with an elbow to the gut as soon as your hand makes contact with Laura’s hip.

“Down, lesbian. It’s your sister, not the moppet that’s been keeping your bed warm for the last few months.”

Mattie’s voice is rough and slurred, and your brain is kind of feeling the same way, but you’re still able to process her words after the momentary confusion clears.

Last night comes back to you in a red wine flavored wave, and then you’re crying again.

Because Laura’s not yours.

A small voice in your brain pipes up with a reminder that Laura is an individual and belongs to no one other than herself, but you immediately beat the living shit out of that voice with a studded baseball bat because _Laura’s not yours anymore._

Maybe she never fucking was, maybe the last few months have been some fucked up hallucination.

Your crying, which had been silent a minute ago, evolves into sobs that leave your lungs burning.

Mattie must realize her blunder, or at least she hears the hiccuping, sniffling result of it, because a second later she’s sitting up beside you and attempting to placate you by cooing false promises that sound hollow and do absolutely nothing to help.

“Lay back down for a few minutes ‘Milla, I’ll go whip us up some breakfast.”

You do as your told and close your eyes once more, rolling onto your back and trying to string together a few successful breaths. It doesn’t really work.

For a moment you think about reaching for your phone, maybe calling Laura and telling her just how badly she’s hurt you could be cathartic?

Then you remember that you threw it at the wall with quite a bit of force last night, so it’s almost definitely broken.

Attempting to block out any and all thoughts of last night, you choose to keep your eyes shut and tune your ears into your kitchen, trying to figure out what Mattie’s doing.

With her woeful cooking skills, you’re guessing she’s looking for your takeout menus.

You hear her shuffling around, opening drawers with a few mumbled curses scattered between the sounds of said drawers slamming shut. This continues for a minute, and it’s almost kind of amusing until you hear the sharp groan that indicates she’s just opened the cabinet beneath your kitchen sink, AKA the cabinet which most people use to store cleaning supplies. Mattie might be disaffected and totally unaware of how plebeians like yourself live, but she’s not dense enough to believe that you’ve got anything other than Windex and a bottle of bleach under there.

You wonder for a moment if she’s going to come back into your room with the bleach, a novelty bendy straw sticking out of the opened cap, and put you out of your misery with a cheerful ‘Breakfast is served, Kitty Cat.’ 

You shake away that thought — Mattie’s more of a hire-an-assassin type, anyway — and tune back into the sounds of your kitchen.

Thankfully, you hear her close the doors to that particular cabinet, followed by a soft ‘thwap’ noise that suggests she’s just dropped her hands to the counter in frustration. It’s silent for a minute, but then you pick up on a few more shuffled steps, a scoff, and the creak of your window opening. There’s a clicking noise, which you know for a _fact_ is the sound of fingernails tapping against glass, followed by roughly a dozen peeling sounds, which are so familiar to you at this point that you almost start crying again.

 

Notes. Laura left you a note. Or like, twelve of them.

Who fucking cares though, you’re sure it’s just some longwinded ramble about how she’s been fucking the ginger giant the whole time you’ve been sleeping with each other and now she’s come to her senses and decided that she never wants to see your stupid fucking face ever again.

Nevertheless, you’re sitting up now, ear cupped and head turned slightly to maximize your hearing.

A few minutes pass and you’re left waiting with baited breath, but then Mattie lets out a long, frustrated groan.

She growls out a quiet ‘Oh for the love of god’ before you’re met with the contrastingly loud noise of your kitchen door opening and slamming shut. You debate the merits of getting out of bed to see what the fuck Mattie’s doing, but settle on staying under the blankets and doing literally _nothing,_ instead.

****

You’re not sure how much time has passed, but you must’ve fallen asleep at some point because you’re startled back into consciousness via a small stack of post-it notes tossed at your face with expert precision.

“Wha-"

“Rise and shine, Sis, I have news that I _believe_ you might like.”

“Mattie, what are you-"

She cuts you off with a brusque ‘ah ah ah’ and gestures for you to look at the notes she’d dropped on your face a moment ago.

With no small sense of trepidation, you begin to read.

It starts off _strongly_ , to say the very least, and even if the handwriting didn’t give it away, it’s immediately clear that these notes weren’t written by Laura.

 

**‘Hey Elvira, I don’t know what the fuck you’re playing at…’**

 

You’re tempted to tear the fucking things up as soon as you realize that they’ve been touched by Danny, which means that you’ve unwillingly come in some diluted form of contact with the bitch. The only contact you’re interested in sharing with her would be in the form of your fist meeting her face. Even then, you’d probably opt to wear gloves.

 

**‘…but I hope you know that you basically just broke my best friend’s heart…’**

 

Best friend?

 

**‘…Honestly, how fucking cruel can someone be? You asked her to be home to what, show off your new girlfriend? You’re lucky Laura asked me not to do anything because I have half a mind to come through your window and _fuck you up…’_**

 

You’re still confused, but if you look at the situation through a lens where you and Laura are actually the stupidest people in the world, then all of this shit slowly starts to piece together. The story you’re left with might as well be Swiss cheese though, because even if they thought Mattie was your girlfriend (which, gross) you’re still looking at a _lot_ of fucking plot holes. Why was Danny there to begin with? Why _the fuck_ was Laura acting like she wanted to jump her bones? Is nobody going to mention the goddamn Cafe Incident?

“For christ’s sake, Carmilla! I can literally see you thinking yourself into a frenzy, just finish reading the damn note before I’m forced to give you the Sparknotes recap!”

You skim through the rest of the note, not interested in hearing what would undoubtedly be a scathingly sarcastic recap from Mattie.

 

**‘…Do you even realize how badly you’re fucking with Laura’s head right now? Jesus, the poor girl is probably gonna need therapy, especially seeing as her first instinct when she saw you with your new hussy was to start flirting with me! The Laura _I know_ isn’t that petty, which means, and I’m really not happy to say this, she’s either losing it, or she’s so into you that she’s willing to act as badly as she needs to to hurt you back. I don’t know what the fuck she ever saw in you, her judgment must be shot if she could let herself fall for such an asshole, plus, who the fuck _waltzes_ in their goddamn kitchen? You’re probably a secret trust-fund baby with a stick up her ass, honestly…’ **

 

You’re only halfway through the stack of notes so far, and frankly, Danny’s rambling isn’t even _slightly_ endearing and you just want her to _get to the fucking point._ You’ve gotten so antsy in the last three minutes that you can hardly bear to read the rest of it, you just want to know if this all means that maybe there’s a chance you and Laura could fix things.

Looking back to the notes and seeing how Danny’s managed to cram an unbelievable amount of words on all of the little sheets following the one you were in the middle of reading, you give up.

“Mattie I can’t fucking do this, Sparknotes please?”

She grins at you.

“I was hoping you’d say that. To summarize that mess of a death-threat-meets-tell-all-novel, Laura is not sleeping with the tall redhead, and is, in fact, very much infatuated with you. Actually, she’s in quite a similar situation to you, what with how she’s apparently spent, and I quote, ‘every waking fucking second’ mooning about you to Danny and fretting over whether or not you two are an item. Somewhere around page 35 of Big Red’s atrocious novel, she even mentioned an instance where Laura ditched you at some coffee shop and forced her to spend the night listening to Laura talk about how badly she wanted to make a move on you-"

“Wait! The Cafe Incident?!”

Mattie gives you a look that clearly says ’the what now?’

“How on Earth should I know, Darling? _Anyway,_ let’s just wrap this up. _You_ are a moron who jumps to conclusions and avoids her feelings like a toddler avoids the dark. _Laura_ is an impulsive idiot who desperately needs to grow a pair, but, overall, seems very sweet and clearly intends to be the co-mother of the cat you two will inevitably adopt and name something ridiculous like, oh I don’t know, K.D. Lang?”

Your jaw drops at that, and you whisper “Actually she’d be named Melissa Etheridge” to yourself. Mattie ignores you completely and continues her analysis.

“ _Danny_ is in dire need of a writing coach or something of the sort, because her prose leaves _so much_ to be desired, and also, she wants to kill you. And all _three_ of you are giving me a migraine with your lesbian antics, I mean really, Sweetheart, it’s Sunday morning.”

Mattie concludes her recap with a singular proud clap, reminiscent of a kindergarten teacher, or like, an overenthusiastic-yet-painfully-depressed team leader at Target.

Regardless, she does kind of have a point. You and Laura have been acting like morons. And unless she does something incredible to change your mind, you’re fine with thinking that Danny just _is_ a moron, flat out.

Although you _do_ have some begrudgingly appreciative feelings for her churning grossly in your stomach, because at least she’s semi-decent-alright enough to defend the honor of/be deemed worthy of friendship by Laura. You wonder if _you’re_ worthy of being loved by Laura, but before you can dive down that rabbit hole, your hesitant introspection is interrupted by Mattie, again.

“Seeing as you’re not jumping to action and trying to make things right, which I both expected would be the case and took preparative measures for, I’ll leave you with the following statements,”

You roll your eyes at how your sister treats most conversations like a halfassed business proposal, and then immediately try not grimace at the feeling because you’ve done _a lot_ of crying and goddamn your eyes are itchy.

Mattie clears her throat like she’s about to deliver the State of The Union — a task she’d handle infinitely better than the shit-ticket that’s currently in charge — and begins her concluding remarks.

“ _You,_ dear sister, need to put on some decent clothing — a foreign concept, I know — and get washed up, because truthfully you look like absolute hell and smell like you’ve spent years playing the role of ‘packet of silica beads’ in a musty barrel of red wine. Also, I have a surprise waiting for you in the kitchen, and I’m sure it wouldn’t appreciate your current level of hygiene. Finally, I’ll be returning sometime later tonight but I’m leaving for my hotel now, because I refuse to be within a five mile radius of this apartment when you and Laura get your heads out of your asses and engage in what’s sure to be at least half a dozen rounds of truly revolting make-up sex.”

With that, Mattie’s snatching up her belongings and swanning through your bedroom door, making sure to shut it tightly behind her.

Through the flimsy material of your door, you can hear her say ‘I _do_ hope to meet you under better circumstances in the future Cherie, you’re good for her. Ta!’ followed by Laura’s voice responding with a shaky and unprepared ‘Uh-uh-yeah! I-I’m really sorry for all of this uh- _unsavory_ business, Mattie-Ms. Belmonde, it was r-really nice meeting you!’

You hear your kitchen door slam shut with a pleased laugh from Mattie, and you just barely catch her faint, fond parting words of ‘Oh moppet, you’re precious.’

You take a deep breath and rise from your bed as quietly as you can manage in your disheveled, emotionally shaken, and admittedly hungover state, because god knows Laura heard every fucking word that was said between you and your sister and you don’t need her listening to the musical stylings of Carmilla-Tripping-Over-Her-Dresser-And-Busting-Her-Ass to help her solidify the understanding that you’re an absolute dumbass. Stealthily grabbing a change of clothes, you head into your ensuite bathroom and commence the process of making yourself appear slightly less broken.

****

There’s a solid minute of silence between Laura and yourself when you first enter the kitchen, those 60 seconds dedicated to a mutual appraisal of the other’s visible level of anguish and distress.

You’d like to think it's a tie.

Laura’s eyes are clearer than yours, but her hair looks like she’s trying to replicate a birds nest whereas you’ve opted to hide the bulk of your similarly birds nest-y curls beneath a beanie.

The standoff is broken by Laura taking a hesitant step forward.

“Y-your sister seems nice… like, uh, _super duper fucking scary_ , but nice…”

You can’t help but snort at that, and your reaction puts Laura at ease slightly because you can see that her eyes have gotten softer.

She offers you a contrite smile and a quiet “Can I try to explain?”

You nod, so she does.

Her explanation is pretty similar to what Danny’s note suggested the story to be.

“ _Well_ , this morning I was woken up by your sister banging down my back door because she apparently discovered Danny’s note, which I’m assuming you read?”

“I read some of it, got Mattie to summarize the rest when I got to the point that I couldn’t keep reading anymore… I’ve gotta ask though, why’d you let Danny put that note up in the first place? I guess it just doesn’t seem like something you’d do, letting someone try and fight your battles, or whatever.”

Laura blushes at that, and hesitates for a moment like she’s debating whether or not to say something.

“Uh, well first off, she taped the notes up really high on your window so I couldn’t exactly reach to get them down, and secondly, you’re right, I _really_ don’t like it when people try to fight my battles. _Actually,_ the whole overprotectiveness thing is one of the main reasons why I… broke up with Danny.”

Those words feel like a knife in the gut, because didn’t Danny’s note say that Laura was just her best friend?

You clear your throat.

“Was this uh, r-recently?”

“What? No! Nonononono, we’d dated for like two months in college, but I broke it off with her because she was too clingy and controlling and honestly she was a lot like my dad while we were dating a-and now that I think about it that’s actually kind of a disgusting comparison because I sure as hell wouldn’t do the things I did with her with my dad that’s just gross god why am I even thinking about that-"

“Laura! You need to breathe, Cupcake, holy shit.”

“Sorry!”

“It’s alright, I’m used to your rambling by now. Just, please refrain from mentioning doing naughty things with the giant, you’re gonna make me sick.”

“Can do! Wait, are you jealous?”

You roll your eyes.

“Laura, of course I fucking am…”

Honestly. You know in your bones that you love this dense little person, but sometimes you find yourself thinking that Laura desperately needs to work on her ability to read the fucking room. In this case, _you_ are the room. You hesitate for a second before continuing.

“I thought I was gonna die, like actually just spontaneously implode in my kitchen, when I saw you wrapped around that fucking fire hydrant you call a best friend. Why was she even at your place?”

“First of all, I know you don’t like Danny, but she’s my best friend so the shit-talking needs to stop, _capisce?_ Secondly… I’m sorry for, ugh god I don’t even want to think about it, but, for like, _getting all up in Danny’s grill,_ or whatever, it was childish and petty and I thought you were like, _replacing me,_ but I clearly didn’t know Mattie was your sister, and speaking of your sister, she was right, I’m literally an impulsive idiot and I just wanted you to hurt like I was hurting… and she was only in my apartment because we’d just finished with a late meeting and she needed to pick up some files that I accidentally took home a few days ago, nothing nefarious, I swear.”

She adopts a lower, rushed tone of voice for the ‘Danny’s grill’ statement and it almost makes you want to laugh. The sincerity in her apology prevents that though, so the serious atmosphere of your kitchen remains undisturbed. But still, the returned usage of the word capisce is really just unfair and unnecessary and basically insult to injury.

“You know, both times at the cafe where you ran out on me, I totally thought you were running off to go shack up with her instead.”

“Carm! What on earth made you think that?!”

Oh hey, there’s that ‘desperately needs to work on her ability to read the fucking room’ thing, again.

“Gee, I don’t know, how about the fact that I never thought you’d actually be interested in me? Or that, once we started sleeping together, we never actually decided whether or not we would be exclusive? Or maybe, _just maybe,_ it’s because you’re so fucking _good_ and I’ve never been able to hold onto good things? Christ, Laura, literally _one_ person in my life has ever considered me ‘monogamous relationship material,’ and she turned out to be a nineteen year old devil incarnate who cheated on me with _all three_ of my roommates and basically turned my college experience into a steaming pile of shit!”

You’re breathing hard by the end of your rant, and Laura’s just looking at you with wide eyes. Then she’s taking a deep breath and adopting her trademark ‘I’m about to lay some serious shit on you right now’ face.

“Carmilla Karnstein, you need to stop this little pity party right fucking now. First of all, have you _seen_ yourself? How could I _not_ be interested in you?!? God, you’re literally the most attractive person I’ve ever seen, and as if _that_ wasn’t enough to basically slap me in the face with a big old stamp that says ‘interested,’ you also turned out to be this charming, funny, caring girl, admittedly clumsy and crude sometimes, but it’s endearing, a-and _god!_ Why do we both _fucking suck at this?!”_

You stifle a watery laugh and drop your head down, cradling your forehead with your thumb and pointer finger pressed against both temples. Your hands are shaking and you’re not sure if it’s because of the nerves, the pent-up emotional turmoil, or the copious amounts of cheap red wine from the night before.

Tugging your shirt collar up to use as an impromptu tissue for your dripping nose — you’re nothing if not the spitting image of refined womanly grace, of course — you do your best to wipe up and then drop your chin to your chest. With a mighty sigh, you put all of your energy into channeling the spirit of literally any well-adjusted adult and take a leap.

“I’m sorry for being a jealous prick. I should’ve asked you what the deal with Danny was months ago, instead of assuming the worst and acting like a shitty toddler about it. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to grow a fucking pair and tell you that I think you’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met and I’d be the luckiest piece of shit in the world if I was allowed to call you mine. And I’m sorry I just used ‘anti-feminist language that feeds into patriarchal rhetoric,’ I know you hate that. I’m _not_ sorry about the way that I feel about you though. I-I-I want to be exclusive. I want to be yours, and I want to be the _only_ person you’re calling yours, god knows I’m too much of an emotional wreck for open relationships, anyway… I want to spend my free time thinking about you without having to deal with panicked thoughts of ‘does Laura love me back?’ I want to be your girlfriend, and I want you to be _my_ girlfriend, even if it means that in a year we have to adopt a lesbian cat and move into a fucking cottage in the woods and survive off of pussy and mushrooms and cat food alone, I don’t care! I-goddamnit, I fucking love you Laura, I’m _in love_ with you. And please either just tell me you feel the same, o-or walk out my door and pretend that I never existed, but if you do the second one can you pass me the liquor first? Because I’m gonna need some way to handle that and we both know I don’t do super well dealing with my thoughts on my own… B-but yeah, that’s where I’m at. Laura Hollis, you charming, _incredible_ fucking dweeb, I’m in love with you, and I want you to be my girlfriend, and I know this is probably all a little bit rushed but I don’t give a fuck about falling into lesbian stereotypes because you’re _it_ for me, and I can’t let myself let you slip out of my hands without laying everything on the table, first.”

Minus the handful of points where you definitely spiraled off topic, you’re kinda proud of the speech you just made. Although you’re worried that its impact might be lessened by the fact that you delivered it all in a hurried ‘rip-the-motherfucking-bandaid-off’ tone with your head tipped back and your eyes firmly shut.

Wrapped up in your confession as you are, you don’t notice Laura approaching you until you feel two warm, slightly sweaty hands cradle your face and your favorite lips in the world pressed against your own.

Laura muffles an excited squeal into your mouth and grabs you around the waist so tightly you think she’s given you her answer right then and there. Breaking the kiss, she speaks.

“H-h-have I ever told you you’re an asinine douche?”

You sputter a laugh, and you’re pretty sure trace amounts of your own snot winds up sprayed onto Laura’s face, but she doesn’t back away.

“Yeah Cupcake, like four times this week at least,”

She pulls you back in and her tongue is suddenly in your mouth and you feel like you could die happy.

“Good. Because it’s true. God, Carm, I’m so fucking in love with you, and I agree we’re probably rushing into things but, well, I’m game if you are—”

You’re kissing her again before she can even finish talking, and Laura manages to blurt out her apologies between kisses and it tells you everything you didn’t know that you needed to hear.

Laura wants you and only you, she promises to talk about shit in the future instead of jumping to conclusions as long as you promise to do the same, she loves you.

****

Mattie’s prediction of ‘half a dozen rounds of truly revolting make-up sex’ turns out to be eerily accurate.

The second you and Laura pry your mouths apart and stop crying onto the others’ face like two overdramatic lesbians in a shitty romantic comedy, you’re dragged into your room and given the command to get naked in a tone that leaves no room for questions.

You oblige without a second thought, and you’re left lounging on your mattress wearing nothing but a smile in about ten seconds flat. After a moment, Laura’s just as naked as you are, and then she’s digging through the pile of miscellaneous shit at the foot of your bed before coming up triumphant, recently purchased dildo in hand.

She grimaces when she sees the used condom still wrapped around it from the last time you’d fucked her with it, and gingerly pulls it off to toss it in the trash while shooting you a ‘Seriously, Carm?’ kinda look.

You shrug, because _what?_ You’re fucking lazy, and you know she’s well aware of that by now.As if the fact that you went out of your way to buy condoms _solely_ so you could avoid having to thoroughly wash the toy between uses wasn’t enough of a testament to your laziness. Christ, you even suffered through a forced interaction with the lecherous neckbeard of a man-child cashier at the pharmacy, who repeatedly asked if you were ‘planning a fun night with your boyfriend,’ to buy those fuckers.

Laura gives the toy a once-over and a cursory sniff before shrugging back at you, apparently deeming it to be suitably clean. Grabbing the deep red boyshort-style harness from the pile as well, she quickly tosses the items onto your comforter and joins you in bed.

She rolls on top of you and slots a thigh between yours immediately, inhaling sharply at the way your legs fall open in time with your moan. She grins down at you while she rocks her hips forward.

“Someone’s wet, eh?”

You huff, because Laura can be insufferably smug sometimes. Not bothering with a reply, you reach down between your bodies and run two fingers through her folds, biting your lip when you feel just how wet she is, too. You make deliberate eye contact with her and quirk one eyebrow up as you ghost circles around her clit.

Her eyes are already hazy and slightly unfocused from that gentle touch alone, and she glares at the grin you give her.

“Shut up, Carm.”

“Didn’t say anything, Buttercup.”

“Still, shut up.”

“Make me?”

You’re not sure why you bother posing it as a question, because you both know that Laura doesn’t need any encouragement to sit on your face. She’s already crawling up your body when she replies.

“Happily.”

You crane your head up instinctively as soon as Laura's cunt is hovering over your mouth, and you want her so fucking badly that you don’t even take the time to admire the way her labia shine with excited arousal or the beautiful shade of swollen pink her inner folds have adopted. 

After a slow swipe of your tongue up the length of her, which pulls a breathless gasp from both of you, she immediately picks up her rhythm of staccato grinds that’s become oh so familiar to you.

Laura only allows you to drink her in for a handful of minutes, and you actually whine when she lifts herself up on shaking knees and moves back down your body.

In comparison to the first fumbling time she’d done it, she manages to get the harness and dildo secured around her hips impressively quickly. Then she’s draping herself over you and settling her hips between yours, letting the length of her shaft press heavily against your pussy until she’s parting your lips and picking up a slow back and forth thrust against you. She’s gliding through your folds easily, and you’re biting your lip to hold back a moan each and every time the slick silicone of the toy rubs over the base of your clit.

You raise your head forward to watch the now-shiny black shaft moving through you for a moment, but when you glance up at Laura and see the way she’s got her eyes glued to that same sight, mouth open slightly and eyebrows raised in awe, your patience for teasing flies out the fucking window. You drop your head back to the pillow.

“Laura _please_ , just fuck me already,”

You know you’re whining but you don’t give a shit.

The plea causes Laura’s movements to slow until they still completely, and when you look up at her, you’re met with a calculating expression that clearly states she’s tossing an idea around in her head.

“Nope,” She pops the P and it’s kind of adorable, “I’m not gonna fuck you just yet, Carm.”

You’re only confused for a moment when Laura begins to shuffle up your body like she’d done just a few minutes ago, but when she swings her right leg over your body to join her other one so that she’s kneeling beside your head, you start to get the picture.

You look up to try and get a read of Laura’s expression, but your view is obscured by the dildo bobbing in and out of your sightline. Tilting your neck slightly, you almost want to laugh at the fact that Laura’s just kneeling next to your head with this stupid silicone toy jutting out from her pelvis and swaying in the nonexistent breeze, but then you notice how glossy and blown out her eyes are and the way her chest is rising and falling just a little too quickly.

“Touch yourself.”

“Cupcake, wha-"

 _“Touch yourself_ Carm, c’mon, I know you want to…”

She’s not necessarily _wrong_ , you’re basically gagging for friction at this point, after all, but still, you’d much rather your girlfriend be the source of that friction. You’ve enjoyed unlimited access to your own hands since you realized what the fuck masturbation was, and even though you still consider it to be a worthwhile pastime, it’s old hat compared to having Laura touch you. Beggars can’t be choosers though, and frankly, you’re just happy she’s letting you do anything at all.

Sucking your middle and pointer fingers into your mouth, (which is entirely for show, really, because you’re more than fucking wet enough to be able to touch yourself without any uncomfortable dryness,) you drag your left hand down your body and between your legs.

Your hips jolt up automatically at the first circle of your fingertips around your clit, and you suddenly think that Laura’s a genius because good god you didn’t realize how badly you needed direct stimulation.

“Very good,”

Laura’s voice is breathy and low in her throat and somehow her praise comes off as genuine rather than unnecessarily obscene.

“Feel how wet you are babe? I want you to taste it, too, okay?”

Ah.

 _Now_ her position makes sense.

You mull the idea over for a second and quickly find that you’ve got no great opposition to it.

Meeting Laura’s eyes, you nod.

She grins, and guides you to sit up slightly, supporting yourself on your right elbow while your left hand continues to tease your clit.

Laura shuffles closer and tilts her hips forward slowly until the head of the toy is hovering above your mouth, and you open up dutifully, tongue out flat and waiting for her to bring the shaft down against it.

You’re honestly pretty used to the taste of your own cunt, what with Laura’s proclivity for giving you head and demanding kisses afterwards, and it’s just another flavor that you feel sort of neutral about.

That being said, there’s something about licking your own arousal off of your girlfriend’s fake cock that just fucking _gets to you._ You’re not sure if it’s the power play of the act itself, the way your fingers have sped up in their path around and around your clit, or the fact that Laura’s breath is now coming out faster, all stuttered and uneven.

Maybe it’s a combination of all three, but in a flash your fingers are met with even more slickness, letting you move freely and dip slightly inside yourself. As soon as you slip past that tight ring of muscles and feel just how fucking _warm_ you are, you moan and begin to suck along the sides of Laura’s shaft more earnestly, suddenly _really_ desperate for a more substantial taste of yourself.

You don’t realize that your eyes have closed until Laura’s voice sounds shakily from somewhere above you.

“Oh fuck, Carm, can I-you—inside? Both, i-inside?” 

When you look at her, you immediately notice that she’s got one hand slipped down past the harness, and you absently note how the slight back and forth of the shaft currently sliding between your lips is largely thanks to the movement of her knuckles pushing against the base of the toy each time her fingers sink further into her heat.

You don’t ask her to clarify her question, because you’re kind of as desperate for what she’s asking for as she is.

Instead, you turn your head to face her fully and pull the tip of her cock into your mouth, relishing in her answering moan and smiling around the additional inch of the shaft that pushes past your lips at Laura’s inadvertent hip-buck.

You hum around her when you finally let two fingers slide home, launching right into a rapid, pounding pace when that normal blissfully stretched fullness is nowhere to be found and you’re left wanting more.

Laura sees this and picks up her own pace, her fingers slip-sliding against her clit as she tentatively speeds up the thrusting of her hips.

You’re so distracted by everything that’s happening that Laura has to ask the same question twice — and then a third time once she distances herself from you and leaves your mouth empty — before you manage a reply.

“Wha…?”

“ _I said,_ can you feel that stretch, Carm? Do you feel full yet?”

You automatically shake your head ‘no’ and reach for her hips without any actual goal in mind. There’s not much of anything in your mind right now, actually. 

“S’not enough today Cupcake, need more.”

Before you even realize she’s left her post beside your head, you feel Laura settle back between your legs and scoot up until your thighs are wrapped high up around her waist. The blunt head of the toy bumps against your cunt, so you angle your pelvis up and squeeze your legs to pull Laura closer without a second thought.

She fills you easily, and as soon as her hips meet yours all of the air in your lungs rushes out in a choked cry. You begin to rock up into her, swearing and praying that Laura gets the fucking hint and just starts to pound the life out of you, but she doesn’t.

She does the opposite, actually.

At your fourth attempt at thrusting up into her, Laura grasps you right below the hipbones and holds firmly, not letting you move an inch. She pulls out of you torturously slowly and pushes back in just the same. Repeatedly.

“God Carm, it’s still a little-oh _fuck-_ a l-little surreal to watch you take me like this, holy… I _really_ fucking love watching you split apart for me baby, I just, I just fucking love _all_ of you, oh _shit_ ,”

Her voice breaks on the last word, clearly affected by the groan that rips from your throat in response to her sinking lower on her haunches and putting unbelievable pressure on your attention-starved g spot.

“Laura! L-Laura fuck cupcake I love you-o-ohhh fuck please just fuck me _please_!”

Your pleading is ignored, but she bends down to drag you into a searing kiss all the same. So searing, in fact, that you hardly notice she’s moving until she’s pulled out completely and left you alone to face that horrible emptiness.

“If you wanna control the pace, th-then do it. I wanna watch you ride me—oof!”

The instant you hear the word ‘ride’ you’re moving. Laura’s flipped onto her back quicker than you can say ‘Melissa Etheridge’ and, just as quickly, you’re lining yourself up over her shaft and sinking down with a breathless whimper.

It’s your turn to enjoy your girlfriend’s speechlessness, and you soak up every ounce of affection she’s sending your way as her adoring eyes follow your movements, spine arched back and fingers playing with your nipples as your hips swirl in circles and grind against her length.

Mustering just enough strength to keep your thighs steady, you begin to raise and lower yourself, starting slowly but working up into a frantic rhythm that leaves your head spinning and voice hoarse. You can feel yourself getting close, suddenly meeting more resistance each time you move to sink down on Laura’s shaft, and you drop one hand from where it’s been tugging at a nipple to start playing through your folds instead. As soon as your fingers brush against your clit, you’re done.

You lose balance and fall forward, bracing yourself at the last second with one forearm above Laura’s head and the other hand still trapped between your thighs. Eyes shooting open, you’re suddenly face to face with the woman you love. The woman who’s got fogged over eyes and a gaping mouth and seems to be completely fucking wrapped up in watching you to the point that she’s become a spectator rather than an active participant.

“B-baby please!! Fucking-move, pleasepleaseplease— _FUCK,”_

You bury your face in Laura’s neck to stifle a scream, because she’s snapped out of her haze at the same time that she’s snapped her hips up, pinning you in place above her with two firm hands on your waist as she thrusts up into you. You’re suddenly getting the pounding you’d been dying for earlier, and it's getting harder and harder to breathe with each battering thrust of the toy’s wide head against your impossibly swollen g spot.

Laura keeps you raised up like that for what feels like an eternity, taking full advantage of the way she’s unburdened of the additional weight of you resting on top of her to jog her hips into you frantically. She shifts for a better angle, feet pressed flat to the mattress and knees raised, and uses the new leverage to blow your fucking mind.

You’ve _never_ been fucked like this, taken so thoroughly and completely, in your entire goddamn life and you’re not sure you’ll even survive it. You think you might be crying again.

Happy tears.

Laura’s hands move from your hips to your ass, and she uses her newfound grip to yank you down in time with her thrusts. You yell some garbled mixture of her name and a few choice swear words and fuck it, you’re definitely crying now.

 _Really_ happy tears.

The sharp cracking noise registers a second after you feel the sting of her palm coming down hard on one asscheek, and you all but impale yourself on her still-thrusting shaft as you’re sent hurtling over the edge.

You come harder than you ever have, and when your wits return you realize that you’re somehow laying on your back beside Laura, her chest heaving and the fabric at the front of the harness noticeably wet.

When Laura sees that you’ve returned to the land of the living she rolls on top of you once more, scattering kisses and ‘I love you’s across your face and chest. You hardly take a minute to breathe before tugging the harness halfway down her thighs and sinking three fingers inside of her.

****

Every ounce of the frantic energy that’d consumed the two of you at the start of your make-up sex-a-thon has vanished by round #8.

The drive to touch and feel and _love_ is still there though, strong as ever. And that’s how you find yourself laying on your side with one knee propped up to keep your thighs spread open, pressed flush against Laura who’s mirroring your position.

Your hand is skating around Laura’s folds, toying with the slick, swollen skin beneath the pads of your fingers as her hips jerk and shake at each touch. She’s doing the same to you, and it’s bordering on too much but you can’t bring yourself to stop.

In one fluid move, Laura arches her back and you crane your neck down, capturing her nipple between your lips and tugging gently.

Her voice is past the stage of well-and-truly-fucked-hoarse, and admittedly you’re not fairing much better, but you still shiver at the cracked moan she lets out. You breathe out a broken cry as she skirts her fingers fleetingly over your abused, reddened clit.

“I love you so much, fuck—Laura,”

She tugs you into a kiss and slips a single finger inside of you, knowing that anything more would cause pain, seeing as she’s spent the last god-knows-how-many hours fucking you raw.

You whimper and copy her movement, sucking her tongue into your mouth with a pleased hum as her hips buck up weakly into your touch.

You open your eyes to stare into Laura’s, and the fact that you thought she looked hazy and unfocused eight rounds of sex earlier is laughable. Her eyes are hardly open, but you can tell that the blown-out slits of her pupils are still trained on yours, her lips are chapped and she’s mouthing words randomly without producing an actual sound, her skin is flushed bright red, hair sticking up to the sky in some places and matted down with sweat in others.

She’s never looked more beautiful, and you think this last orgasm might just kill the both of you.

Laura crooks her finger up and pulses it against your spot, which is so fucking swollen at this point she probably couldn’t avoid hitting it if she tried, and in one out of body moment you’re coming again. The orgasm is gentle — because you’ve lost count of how many she’s given you today and of course it fucking is, you’re not a superhero — but still satisfying. You’ve never experienced _this,_ giving yourself to someone so entirely that you know for a fact you’ve exhausted your body to the point of collapse, and you think you might cry again. For an embarrassing fourth time.

Taking that swell of emotion as inspiration, you bring your thumb up to trace delicate circles around her clit. You can feel her inner walls flutter weakly around the finger you’ve still got pumping shallowly inside of her, and with the last burst of energy in your body, you force yourself to roll over until your body is draped over hers. Your hand works between both of your legs, diligent but gentle, and you trade the friction from movement for the friction from pressure. Stilling your finger inside of her, you only have to roll your hips down against the back of your hand twice before she croaks out what you know for a fact will be her last orgasm-induced cry for the day.

When you hear your kitchen door creak open, followed by the telltale sound of stilettos clicking across the linoleum floor, the only thing that runs through your head is ‘Well that’s convenient.’

Mattie’s voice rings out in your kitchen and you wish you’d bothered to lock any of your doors.

“Greetings little sis, your savior has returned! Are you home…?”

You hear a few more clicks as she walks closer to your bedroom door. Then, in her still-too-loud ‘inside voice,’ you hear her talking to herself.

“I’ve been gone for over six hours, surely they can’t still be…? No, there’s no chance ‘Milla has that kind of stamina, plus, I don’t _hear_ anything…”

Laura’s almost definitely passed out beneath you, and you’re well on your way to matching that status regardless of how you’re both still shaking slightly with aftershocks. You can’t move from your current position, and even with the surge of energy channeled from the bristly anger of Mattie shit-talking your sexual prowess, your limbs feel like literal jelly and your attempts to grab the long-forgotten duvet with your toes and tug it up over your naked bodies aren’t successful in the least.

Your bedroom door opens right as you manage to swing an arm behind you to grab blindly for the blankets.

You’re pretty sure you can actually hear Mattie’s jaw drop.

You can _definitely_ hear the resounding ‘thwap!’ of her hand rushing to her face to cover her eyes though.

“Carmilla Karnstein! I gave you ample time to shove yourself back into your lady-friend’s good graces, why on earth are you still naked?! WAIT, do _not_ answer that, or any of my previous questions. Oh god, I’m going to be sick—"

“Fug’off Mattie…”

Your reply lacks any bite, but you’re proud you managed to sort of enunciate a full statement, even if it was only three words.

“Oh don’t you lesbian snark at me, missy-"

Mattie spreads her middle and ring fingers so she can glare at you through her self-enacted vision blocker, but quickly adopts an expression of absolute panic when she gives your room a cursory glance and spots your girlfriend, limp and looking a little bit worse for wear, beneath you.

“What the-Is she alright?! Good god Carmilla if you killed your— Laura! Can you hear me?!”

Laura’s arm rises shakily to give Mattie a thumbs up, and you glare at her over your shoulder, ignoring how your naked ass is on display and most definitely featuring more than a few handprints and scratches.

“She’s _fine_ ,”

Mattie raises an eyebrow but swiftly steps out of the room, closing the door behind her. Which she then proceeds to shout past.

“Whatever you say, Kitty Cat. Please though, for the love of god, crack a window? It smells like a brothel in there. And what about dinner, hmm?”

“Mmfuh-shit Mattie, m’sorry… jus’ give us like an hour t’sleep an then we’ll get dinner, ‘kay?”

Mattie takes pity on you and leaves with a warning of “One hour, sixty minutes exactly. I swear to god if I come back to find you neck deep in the moppet I’m going to murder the both of you out of sheer hanger.” 

You’re too exhausted to be shocked by your sister taking pity on you, and you can’t even bring yourself to laugh at her for using slang that she’d previously condemned as the language of ‘the sniveling brainwashed imbeciles that compose the bulk of the country’s youth.’

You relax when you hear your door slam shut, taking a deep breath and placing a gentle kiss on Laura’s forehead. With a smile, you shut your eyes and snuggle into your already dozing girlfriend, who sleepily tugs at you until you’re settled completely on top of her, legs intertwined and sharing the same air.

 

You’re not sure where you end and Laura begins.

You’ve never been happier.


End file.
